Americas Trade and Sustainable Development Forum
June 3, 2003, 1:00 pm - November 20, 2003, 12:00 am
Location: Miami, Florida
Several nongovernmental organizations met in Washington, DC to discuss plans for a civil-society forum at the Ministerial Meeting on the Free Trade Area of the Americas planned for this November in Miami. Interested GDN-NA visitors may download the report from this meeting.
On May 21st, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the North-South Center at the University of Miami, Tulane University's Institute for Environmental Law and Policy, the Canadian Foundation for the Americas (FOCAL), the Centro Ecuatoriano de Derecho Ambiental (CEDA), PARTICIPA, Chile, Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, Argentina (FLACSO), and the International Institute for Sustainable Development hosted a public meeting to discuss an opportunity for civil society involvement in the November 2003 Free Trade Area of the Americas Ministerial. The meeting took place at the Carnegie Endowment, Washington, DC.
Participants were joined by Chris Padilla, Assistant United States Trade Representative for External Affairs. Mr. Padilla described U.S. goals for public involvement in the FTAA Miami Ministerial.
Learning from past FTAA ministerials, the United States' objective is to organize opportunities for more interactive discussion between trade ministers, sub-minister level government officials, and representatives from non-governmental organizations. The Office of United States Trade Representative (USTR) is committed to ensuring a safe and secure environment in which to facilitate meaningful interaction with civil society at a level equal to the access afforded to the Americas Business Forum. To that end, USTR has taken the following steps:
Working with representatives from the Miami FTAA Host Committee and the North-South Center at the University of Miami, USTR has created an opportunity for civil society groups to organize workshops within the security perimeter of the ministerial. A core organizing group of non-governmental organizations from several countries throughout the Americas with experience and expertise in coordinating civil society involvement at FTAA ministerials and in the Summit of the Americas has been formed and an initiative for a Americas Trade and Sustainable Development Forum, November 17-19, 2003, has been launched. Civil society activities within this perimeter will facilitate interaction between workshop organizers, participants, and country delegates.
While the United States government cannot guarantee delegation involvement in the workshops, it will encourage the FTAA parties including FTAA negotiating group chairs to attend, and wherever possible, participate.
USTR has scheduled a meeting between civil society workshop representatives and the trade ministers, tentatively set for late afternoon, November 19. The meeting will be designed for substantive discussion among the participants, as opposed to the Americas Business Forum tradition of making speeches to the ministers, and previous fora where civil society representatives have simply made one-way presentations to ministers.
Furthermore, USTR will seek to use technology to ensure a broad public audience for the civil society roundtable discussion with ministers, including closed-circuit television and a video to be posted to USTR's website.
USTR will work to facilitate the participation of sub-minister level officials, including Negotiating Group chairs and Vice-Ministers during the first day of the ATSDF. The FTAA Trade Negotiating Committee (TNC) (Vice-Ministerial level) will be meeting during the time of the ABF and ATSDF in advance of the Trade Ministers, whose meetings begin on November 19.
Link: http://www.miami.edu/nsc/pages/FTAA.html
Keywords: FTAA, ATSDF, Miami, Ministerial, civil society