About the Working Group on the Right to Development

HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION
59th session
17 March – 25 April 2003

[Excerpt from the statement]

With regard to international economic and financial issues, the expert states that greater market openness leads to increased economic growth. However, the incompatibility of current neoliberal globalisation with the right to development and the unfairness of WTO agreements for Southern countries is now well established. Indeed, since the WTO’s leitmotif is free trade, the question that arises is who benefits from this free trade. It must be recognised that there can be no free trade between the poor and the rich, the powerful and the weak, as the two are by definition unequal and do not have the same resources or capabilities.

Read the CETIM’s oral statement in French