South Americans Pledge Civil Society Participation in Free Trade Agreement

 
Brazil's priority at the recent Summit of South American Presidents was the immediate creation (before January 2002) of the South American Free Trade Area (SAFTA), an initiative that is at the core of Brazil's building-block approach to the FTAA. Civil society participation would be an integral part of this agreement: The summit's final declaration includes a provision for the creation of a South American version of Mercosur's Economic and Social Forum, which has gained civil society support for the integration effort by making possible free and active participation in officially sanctioned mechanisms.

Yet, the Brasília Declaration goes even further. It states that the South American Economic and Social Forum will have a collective input in civil society events related to the FTAA process-presumably, the Americas Business Forums (other civil society forums have not been granted official recognition or mention in official documents). The declaration specifically mentions representation for employers and workers. Upon careful reading, however, it becomes clear that the proposed forum would be limited to trade and investment matters. One can only imagine that the language was carefully chosen to keep the "wolves" of labor and environmental concerns at bay.

In fact, the Economic and Social Forum, as well as the Mercosur negotiating groups, have worked extensively on workers' rights and the environment. This type of transparency has no equivalent in the US or Canada. Recently, for example, controversy erupted between US unions and NGOs and the Clinton administration's trade negotiators when the Chilean government "leaked" summaries of some of the negotiating groups' activities to the Chilean affiliate of the Continental Social Alliance (ASC, its acronym in Spanish). When the ASC affiliate in the United States, the Alliance for Responsible Trade, contacted the US Trade Representative for the English-language versions of these documents, it were told that they were reserved and could not be circulated! A campaign is in the works to demand the release of the negotiating texts.

The South American presidents appear to have overcome the long-standing objections of Chile and Colombia to increased civil society participation, resulting in a declaration that goes far beyond anything their North American counterparts have offered to date.