GENEVA (IDN | TWN) – When the WTO’s Nairobi Ministerial Conference (MC10) ended on December 19, WTO Director-General Roberto Azevedo and Kenya Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohamed were beaming that they had pulled off a coup of sorts in a successful Conference, with a Declaration and decisions – with the U.S. and the EU, acclaiming both of them.
Developing Countries ‘Bite the Bullet’ in Nairobi
NAIROBI (IDN) – If India and other developing countries, including the 79-nation African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of states had insisted that the World Trade Organization (WTO) Conference – the first on African soil – must reaffirm the focus on development and the ‘Doha Development Agenda’ (DDA), it would have concluded without an outcome document.
However, despite disappointment and strong reservations expressed by India and by representatives of the ACP Group, the conference endorsed the Nairobi Ministerial Declaration (NMD).
IMF Does Not Trigger ‘Bread Riots’ But Sticks to Old Policies
BERLIN (IDN) – Hundreds of thousands of poor people joined spontaneous “bread riots” in most major cities in Egypt back in 1977, protesting termination of state subsidies as dictated to the country’s government by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Those uprisings, which were crushed by the army, underlined the callousness with which the two organizations enforced their aggressive policies of liberalization, turning a blind eye to the sufferings of the people.