Annex 1
NGO Proposals on WTO Reform
1. The "informal" green room meetings
including "Mini-ministerials" in the preparatory process
for Hong Kong must be stopped. They are a breach of the multilateral
process to which the WTO espouses.
2. All negotiating texts which are forwarded
to or prepared in Hong Kong, must be produced by the membership,
and all members should have the opportunity to effectively participate
in the drafting, revision and approval. Differences in positions
should be fairly reflected as options for example by the use of
square brackets. Chairpersons must not present any documents "on
his/her own responsibility" since this destroys the "Member-driven"
and multilateral nature of the institution.
3. The agenda and any draft texts to be
used as the basis for negotiations must be approved by the entire
membership at a formal General Council meeting prior to the Ministerial
in Hong Kong, and confirmed at a formal first business meeting
in Hong Kong.
4. Members as a whole should decide if there
are to be chairs or facilitators to conduct discussions on certain
issues at the Ministerial, and if so they should elect these chairs
or facilitators at a formal General Council meeting in Geneva
before Hong Kong. Clear rules on the role of these chairs and
procedural guidelines on how the Ministerial discussions will
be conducted must be decided by all Members in such a formal meeting.
5. The assembly of all members (ie, the
Committee of the Whole) must be the forum for negotiations at
the Ministerial. Drafting of texts and decisions must be made
in that forum in a transparent way, for example with the use of
a big screen as in some UN conferences, in the presence of the
Membership. Differences in positions can be negotiated in break-out
meetings which all Members are informed about and which are open
to all Members.
6. All meetings must be inclusive and transparent.
The practice of the "Green Room", or exclusive meetings
to which only a few counties are invited, must be stopped. No
Member may be excluded from meetings. Each member-state must be
free to appoint the officials it wants as its representatives,
as well as to decide the number of representatives it wants to
have at each meeting.
7. All meetings must be announced at least
six hours in advance to the entire membership through a daily
calendar including necessary information such as the room, the
chair and the issues to be covered.
8. During Ministerials, there must be cut-off
time in the evenings beyond which meetings cannot be held, eg,
10 pm. This is to cater to small delegations that have no capacity
to stagger their human resources and to ensure that Ministers
of small delegations do not make decisions when they are completely
exhausted in order to end the meetings (eg, 38 hour meetings at
a stretch as in Doha).
9. When new language is proposed during
the Ministerial meeting, the member/s proposing the language must
be indicated.
10. Any proposal to extend the Ministerial
meeting or to amend its agenda or other ministerial processes
should be decided upon by all the Members in a General Assembly
or Committee of the Whole.
11. Issues outside of the WTO's agenda (such
as preferential access arrangements, aid, debt etc.) must not
be brought into the negotiations and held hostage to achieve a
Ministerial outcome.
12. The Secretariat should maintain neutrality
during the Ministerial.
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