Although the Battle of Seattle was successful in preventing a new comprehensive round of global trade talks from going ahead, this did not mean there would not be trade negotiations at the WTO. On the contrary, a whole new set of WTO talks on global trade in 'services' began in February, 2000, with formal negotiations due to begin this spring after a crucial stocktaking session is completed at the end of March. These so called GATS negotiations [General Agreement on Trade in Services] could have a dramatic and profound effect on a wide range of public services and citizens' rights all over the world.

Pasted below is a statement, Stop the GATS Attack Now!, which has been prepared by an international network of civil society organizations working on WTO issues. As with previous initiatives like No New Round! and Shrink or Sink!, we hope this statement will help to launch and link together a series of country-based campaigns on the GATS negotiations all over the world.

We would greatly appreciate it if your organization would consider signing-on to this statement as soon as possible. The procedures for doing so are outlined below. It is our intention to collect sign-ons from civil society organizations in as many countries as possible before formally launching the statement in mid-March prior to the GATS stocktaking meetings in Geneva later that month. So, please let us know soon if your organization can sign-on!

Instructions on how your organization can sign the letter:  (This is an organizational sign-on letter only. We will not be adding individuals to it)

1) Send an e-mail to polarisinstitute@on.aibn.com

2) In the subject line type in "GATS Attack signatory"

3) In the body of the e-mail list the organization and country (contact information such as address, phone & fax is also appreciated) that you are signing on. Those who wish should also mention how many people the organization represents.

 Stop the GATS Attack Now!

Initiated in February 2000, these far-reaching negotiations are aimed at expanding the WTO's General Agreement on Trade in Services [GATS] regime so as to subordinate democratic governance in countries throughout the world to global trade rules established and enforced by the WTO as the supreme body of global economic governance. What's more, these GATS 2000 negotiations are taking place behind closed doors based on collusion with global corporations and their extensive lobbying machinery.

The existing GATS regime of the WTO, initially established in 1994, is already comprehensive and far reaching. The current rules seek to phase out gradually all governmental "barriers" to international trade and commercial competition in the services sector. The GATS covers every service imaginable - including public services - in sectors that affect the environment, culture, natural resources, drinking water, health care, education, social security, transportation services, postal delivery and a variety of municipal services. Its constraints apply to virtually all government measures affecting trade-in-services, from labor laws to consumer protection, including regulations, guidelines, subsidies and grants, licencing standards and qualifications, and limitations on access to markets, economic needs tests and local content provisions.

Currently, the GATS rules apply to all modes of supplying or delivering a service including foreign investment, cross-border provisions of a service, electronic commerce and international travel. Moreover, the GATS features a hybrid of both a "top-down" agreement [where all sectors and measures are covered unless they are explicitly excluded] and a "bottom-up" agreement [where only sectors and measures which governments explicitly commit to are covered]. What this means is that presently certain provisions apply to all sectors while others apply only to those specific sectors agreed to.

The new GATS negotiations taking place now in the World Trade Organization are designed to further facilitate the corporate takeover of public services by:

1) Imposing new and severe constraints on the ability of governments to maintain or create environmental, health, consumer protection and other public interest standards through an  expansion of GATS Article VI on Domestic Regulation. Proposals include a 'necessity test' whereby governments would bear the burden of proof in demonstrating that any of their countries laws and regulations are the 'least trade restrictive,' regardless of financial, social, technological or other considerations.

2) Restricting the use of government funds for public works, municipal services and social programs. By imposing the WTO's National Treatment rules on both government procurement and subsidies, the new negotiations seek to require governments to make public funds allocated for public services directly available to foreign-based, private service corporations.

3) Forcing governments to grant unlimited Market Access to foreign service providers, without regard to the environmental and social impacts of the quantity or size of service activities.

4) Accelerating the process of providing corporate service providers with guaranteed access to domestic markets in all sectors - including education, health and water - by permitting them to establish their Commercial Presence in another country through new WTO rules being designed to promote tax-free electronic commerce worldwide. This would guarantee transnational corporations speedy irreversible market access, especially in Third World countries.

The chief beneficiaries of this new GATS regime are a breed of corporate service providers determined to expand their global commercial reach and to turn public services into private markets all over the world. Not only are the services industries the fastest growing sector of the new global economy, but health, education and water are shaping up to be the most lucrative of all "services." Health care is considered to be a 3.5 trillion dollar market worldwide, while education is targeted as a 2 trillion and water a 1 trillion dollar annual market. The chief executive officer of U.S. based Columbia/HCA, the world's largest for-profit hospital corporation, insists that health care is a business no different than the airline or ballbearing industry and vows to destroy every public hospital in North America. Investment houses like Merrill Lynch predict that public education will be globally privatized over the next decade, declaring that untold profits can be made through the process. Meanwhile, water giants like Vivendi and Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux of France are working hand-in-glove with the World Bank to compel many Third World governments to privatize their water services.

Through powerful lobby machines like the U.S. Coalition of Service Industries and the European Services Forum, these and other transnational corporations have effectively set the agenda for the GATS 2000 negotiations.

If achieved, this corporate GATS 2000 agenda will amount to a frontal attack on the fundamental social rights enshrined in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its accompanying Covenants and Charters. Not only will foreign-based, for-profit corporations be able to access public dollars to takeover public hospitals and schools, but regulations on health and education standards will be undermined by global trade rules under the WTO. Chains of foreign-based, for-profit corporations would be able to invade the childcare, social security and prison systems in all WTO member countries. Our parks, wildlife and old growth forests could all become contested areas as global corporate 'environmental service' providers compete with one another to eexploit their resourses.  Meanwhile, unlimited access to foreign-based corporations would have to be given regarding municipal contracts for construction, sewage, garbage disposal, sanitation, tourism and water services.

For many Third World countries, this invasion of peoples' basic rights is not new. During the past two decades or more, the structural adjustment programs of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have been used to force many governments in the South to dismantle their public services and allow foreign-based healthcare, education and water corporations to provide services on a for-profit basis. Under the proposed GATS rules, developing countries will experience a further dismantling of local service providers, restrictions on the build up of domestic service providers, and the creation of new monopolies dominated by corporate service providers based in the North. By dramatically increasing market control by foreign service corporations and by threatening the future of public services, the GATS 2000 agenda would trigger a global assault on the commons and democracy both in the North and the South. Moreover, the binding enforcement mechanisms of the WTO will ensure that this agenda is not only implemented, but rendered irreversible. The time has come to 'Stop the GATS Attack!'

We, therefore, call upon our governments to immediately invoke a moratorium on the GATS 2000 negotiations and devote the remaining two years of the scheduled talks to carrying out the following tasks:

[a] conduct a full and complete assessment of the impacts of the current GATS regime and the implications of the proposed GATS 2000 rules on domestic social, environmental and economic laws, policies and programs with citizens' groups in all member countries;

[b] reaffirm the role and responsibility of governments to provide public services ensuring the basic rights and needs of their citizens in the new global economy based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and related U.N. Covenants and Charters;

[c] declaw the existing GATS regime by removing components like Article VI and the Working Party on Domestic Regulation that give foreign governments and transnational corporations the power to ratchet down public interest laws, policies and programs such as quality standards for health care or safety standards for transportation;

[d] guarantee the right of governments to require ironclad safeguards for public services [e.g. healthcare, education, social security, culture, environment, transportation, housing, energy, and water] that may be threatened by global trade and investment rules;

[e] provide concrete incentives and resources, especially for governments in the South, to fulfill their universal obligations [see 'b' above] by further developing and strengthening the provision of public services based on peoples' needs rather than on the ability to pay;

[f] develop mechanisms for effective participation by citizen organizations in both the formulation of their government positions and in the negotiation of any global trade and investment rules in the future regarding cross border services.

[g] secure the rights and responsibilities of governments to enact and carry out laws and regulations protecting the environment and natural resources, health and safety, poverty reduction, and social well-being.

Finally, we call on our governments to end all IMF, World Bank and Multilateral Development Bank pressure on developing countries to privatize public services, especially in the area of education, health and water.

We are building significant momentum.  Most exciting -- AFSCME and Teamsters unions have signed in the U.S. while two important service unions in Canada have signed --Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) -- and Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT) is on from Brazil.

Also, as you know, Public Services International was one of the original signers.  At last count the full list has  over 200 groups from 41 countries. The full list is at the end of this posting.

Organizations currently signed-on to the "Stop the GATS Attack" Statement (as of March 9nd, 2001):

Number of Organizations = 214

Number of Countries = 41

International

Fair Trade Federation (Canada & US)

Indigenous Peoples' Biodiversity Network, IPBN

International Simultaneous Policy Organisation (ISPO)

People-Centered Development Forum

Public Service International (PSI)

Union Network International - Asian and Pacific Regional Organisation (UNI Apro)

Argentina

Foro de Consulta para la Participacion Ciudadana en las Politivcas de Desarrollo

Australia

ACT Greens - Australia

Australian Greens - Australia

Conversations for the 21st Century - Australia

Quest 2025, Australia

Sydney People Against A New Nuclear Reactor (SPANNR)

TROPO (Tweed Richmond Organic Producers Organisation)

WTO Watch ACT - Australia

Austria

Center for Encounter and active Non-Violence

Salzburg Forum against MAI/WTO

Bangladesh

Karmojibi Nari (KN)

Belgium

Life, the Ecocreactive Platform

OXFAM Belgium

URFIG

Brazil

Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT)

Canada

Canadian Action Party

Canadian Federation of Students

Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW)

Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE)

Council of Canadians

Defence of Canadian Liberty Committee

Ecumenical Coalition for Economic Justice

FarmFolk/CityFolk Society

Hospital Employees' Union (British Columbia)

Kingston & District Labour Council

L.I.N.C. (Low Income Needs Coalition)

Ogoni Solidarity Network - Canada

Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation

Polaris Institute

Chile

Red de Educadores Humanistas de Chile

China

Asia Monitor Resource Center- Hong Kong

Colombia

Centro de Debate y Acción Ambiental

Centro de Estudios del Trabajo, Cedetrabajo Revista Deslinde

Instituto Latinoamericano de Servicios Legales Alternativos Ilsa

Movimiento Obrero Independiente y Revolucionario, MOIR

Costa Rica

COECOCeiba, Friends of the Earth

Fiji

Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN)

Finland

Alternative to EUt

France

Attac

CCCOMC de Nemours et ses environs

Ecoropa

Federation syndicale unitaire (FSU)

Institut de recherches historiques, economiques, sociales et culturelles (IRHESC)

Mouvement National de Lutte pour l'Environnement (MNLE)

SNESup (Syndicat national de l'enseignement supérieur)

Germany

Active Partnership With the Southern Hemisphere

World Economy, Ecology & Development

Ghana

All Africa Students Union (AASU)

India

EQUATIONS- Equitable Tourism Options

Indian Institute of Development

International Group for Grassroots Initiatives

Jananeethi

Loyola Hall

Shramik Abhivrudhi Sangh

St Aloysius College

St. Xavier's College Jesuit Management

Tamilnadu Resource Team

Tamilnadu Women's Collective

Thomas Stephens Konknni Kendr

Udayani Social Action Forum

Women's Welfare Center (WWC)

World Voices, India

Youth For Unity And Voluntary Action (YUVA)

Indonesia

KALIPTRA Foundation

International NGO Forum on Indonesia Development (INFID)

Walhi Lampung

Yayasan Pelita Kasih Abadi (PEKA)

Israel

Green course - students for the environment

Italy

SinCOBAS

Japan

A SEED Japan

APEC Monitoring NGO Group

Friends of the Earth, Japan

Jambo International Center

Pacific Asia Resource Center (PARC)

Shimin Gaikou Center - Citizens' Diplomatic Center for the Rights of Indigenous peoples (ECOSOC NGO)

Malaysia

Citizens' Health Initiative - Malaysia

Nepal

Integrated Organization System(IOS)

Nepal Kingdom Foundation

Rural Reconstruction Nepal (RRN)

Netherlands

Both ENDS - Netherlands

Corporate Europe Observatory

International League of Peoples' Struggle

Milieudefensie (Friends of the Earth Netherlands)

Transnational Institute

New Zealand

FAIR NZ - New Zealand

Nicaragua

International People s Health Council (IPHC)

Norway

For the Welfare State (For velferdsstaten)

GATT-WTO Campaign, Norway

Norwegian Association of Health and Social Care Personnel

Norwegian Civil Service Union

Norwegian Farmer and Smallholders Union

Norwegian Nurses Association

Norwegian Union of Municipal Employees

Norwegian Union of Social Educators and Social Workers

Norwegian Union of Teachers

Teachers' Union, Norway

Pakistan

ROOTS for Equity - Pakistan

Peru

Asociacion Kechua-Aymara ANDES

Asociacion Regional de Productores Ecologicos del Cusco

Philippines

Countrywide Indigenous Pilipinos Foundation, Inc

Initiatives For International Dialogue

Romania

For Mother Earth-Romania

Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space

South Africa

eThekwini ECOPEACE - South Africa

Green Party of South Africa

South Korea

Green Korea United

Taegu Round

Spain

ATTAC Cataluña

Eukinonia

Human Rights Observatory (Observatorio de Derechos Humanos, DESC)

El Rincon de Gaia - Las Palmas de Gran Canaria

Platforma Canaria de Seguimiento del Ami y sus Clones    (Islas Canarias)

Sindicato de Trabajadores y Trabajadoras de la Enseñanza de la Región de Murcia

Switzerland

Berne Declaration

Forum for direct Democracy Europa-Magazin

Thailand

Focus on the Global South

Rural Reconstruction Alumni and Friends  Association (RRAFA)

Sustainable  Development  Foundation  (SDF)

Turkey

SOS ISTANBUL Cevre Gonulluleri Platformu (Environmental Volunteers' Platform)

United Kingdom

Anti-Globalisation Network

The Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom

Centre for Alternative Technology

Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation, University of Warwick

Christian Council for Monetary Justice

Christian Ecology Link

Communities Against Toxics

Coventry Trades Union Council

Devizes & Marlborough Friends of the Earth

Earth Rights Institute, Scotland

The Ecologist

Forum for Stable Currencies, House of Lords

Friends of the Earth, Swindon

The Gaia Trust

George Washington University Action Coalition

Green Socialist Network

JPIC Desk

Mid & North Herts Friends of the Earth

Muir's Tours (Nepal Kingdom Foundation Trading Ltd)

North Sheffield Action Group

Stort Valley Friends of the Earth

Tools For Self Reliance Cymru

V & V Network (Values and Vision)

Vision in Action magazine, Wales

Wholesome Food Association

World Development Movement

World Voices

United States

AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees)

Alliance for Democracy

Asia Pacific Center for Justice and Peace

Campus Greens

Carolina Animal Rights Effort

Cascadia Forest Alliance

The Center for the Study of Voluntary Organizations and Service

Coastal Convergence Society

Concerned Citizens Coalition of Roane, Calhoun and Gilmer Counties

CorpWatch, USA

Cumberland Countians for Peace & Justice

Earth Island Journal

The Eco-Store

The Edmonds Institute

50 Years Is Enough: U.S. Network for Global Economic Justice

Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy

Forest Guardians

Global Exchange

Global Resource Action Center for the Environment

Global Response

Goldeneaglevideo Foundation

The Greens/Green Party USA

Hawai'i Institute for Human Rights

Humane Society of the United States

Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy

International Brotherhood of Teamsters

International Socialist Organization

The Institute for Economic  Democracy

The Institute for Local Self-Reliance

Jobs with Justice

Mangrove Action Project

Mendocino Coast Alliance for Democracy

Metro Justice of Rochester, Inc.

MoKan Alliance for Democracy

Obed Watershed Association

Olympia Unitarian Universalist Social Justice Committee

180/Movement for Democracy and Education

Pacific Environment and Resources Center

Pennsylvania Consumer Action Network (PCAN)

Physicians for a National Health Program

Public Citizen

Rainforest Action Network

ReclaimDemocracy.org

Sacramentans For International Labor Rights

Shenandoah Ecosystems Defense Group

Sub-Guerrilla Art Collective! (SGAC)

Texas Committee on Natural Resources (TCNR)

Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory (TOPLAB)

The Thomas Merton Center

United Church of Christ,  Network for Environmental & Economic Responsibility

United for a Fair Economy

Vassar College Student Activist Union

Virginia Forest Watch

Virginians for Wilderness

West Harlem Environmental Action, Inc. (WE ACT)

Who's Counting? Project

Women, Food and Agriculture Network

Uruguay

REDES- Friends of the Earth, Uruguay

REPEM : Education Network Among Women , America Latina y el Caribe

Zimbabwe

SEATINI - Zimbabwe