STWR - Share The World's Resources

When the World Bank agreed to finance an oil pipeline for Chad four years ago, it went in with eyes wide open. Mindful of the possibility that the oil profits might be squandered — or stashed in overseas bank accounts by corrupt officials — the bank required Chad to agree to put aside the profits in special funds for education, health and other poverty-reduction programs. Ten percent was to be stashed in a rainy-day fund to help the country once the oil ran out.

 It's not just the common agricultural policy: the corporate sector relies on state handouts that dwarf their profits

Do you ever suffer from a sense of deja vu? That you have seen something before.

Aftab Alam Khan, head of ActionAid's trade justice campaign, reflects on the WTO's sixth ministerial conference and what the final declaration means for the world's poorest people

The trade reform promises rich countries made four years ago are set to be broken at a World Trade Organisation (WTO) meeting in Hong Kong next week, international agency Oxfam warned in a new report published today.

Once again international attention is focussed on trade negotiations, with hectic parlays between groups of countries before the forthcoming WTO Ministerial Meeting in Hong Kong. And once again it is clear that developing countries are unlikely to get much relief or advantage from these talks, either in terms of being allowed greater flexibility to provide some protection to their own producers, or in terms of greater market access to the markets of developed countries.

It is history repeating itself as farce. Negotiators meeting in London, Geneva and elsewhere await an acceptable agreement between the US and the EC on agriculture, before working out a deal that would help salvage the next major step in the Doha Round of trade negotiations: the Hong Kong Ministerial starting December 13.