NGOs call for facilitating Yemen accession to WTO [Archives:2005/903/Business & Economy]
By: Mahyoub al-Kamali
A workgroup set up by several Yemeni Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) has recently requested the World Trade Organization's ministerial council to ease the procedures for Yemen entry in the WTO, to write-off its debts and to facilitate fair trade with Yemen and its underdeveloped counterparts. In its third campaign, the workgroup, led by Ms Ramziyah al-Eryani, stressed on the necessity of joining forces of all popular and official activists and the enhancement of their partnership for the purpose of serving the Yemeni society. She has pointed out that this global campaign for fighting poverty calls on the WTO to facilitate procedures for Yemen to join the organization with easy conditions in line with the principled commitment of assisting the developing countries and poor peoples and expansion the base of participation.
Yemeni NGOs have also called on industrialized and rich countries to deal fairly with poorer and underdeveloped member countries in the WTO, away from material gains, profit and loss, as a part of their commitment to the peoples of the south in order to alleviate poverty. They mentioned that world leaders have to exhibit the necessary political will while negotiating commercial policies with poorer countries.
The Launch of this campaign comes as part of a global strategy for fighting poverty: more than 31 million people have taken part in activities of the world campaign on fighting poverty during the year 2005, in spite of the disappointing political decisions by several member countries including the EU with regards to its agricultural policy.
Nevertheless, there is progress coupled with political and civil momentum behind the call for ending poverty; the aim of the campaign is encourage another ten million people to join the effort in order to affect decision-makers. It is important to mention that the workgroup of the NGOs was set up in September 2003 and it includes 21 organizations representing Yemeni NGOs and covers 19 governorates. This workgroup is one of five others aiming for facilitating good coordination among all civilian institutions concerned with taking part in implementation and follow-up poverty alleviation strategy. This is a translation of the strategy call for activation and enhancement of partnership between the government and the private sector, the civil society and donor parties for its implementation and follow-up according to the set mechanism.
On his part, the director of communication and coordination office with the WTO Mr. Hamoud Ali al-Najjar has said: “The Yemeni team for negotiating with the WTO has mad good progress with regards to Yemen's joining of the organization.” He also added that the mid of 2006 would witness several accomplishments on the road of Yemen's accession to the WTO, pointing that four states support Yemen in this regard, among them the United States of America, Canada and Australia which presented questions and Yemen is now negotiating with it. Mr. al-Najjar added that Japan and China had shown interest in this question and expected that talks with those two countries would be held later to discuss the matter. He also said the office of the workgroup had many tasks to deal with at present such as the preparation of a national mechanism to answer questions of the WTO submitted during Geneva talks, as well as the reconsideration of the two offers related to commodities and services, in the light of remarks expressed by the member states in prelude to submit them to the national committee and that of policies. Then there would be decisions taken regarding the negotiating margin on which the Yemeni side would discuss in addition to preparing documents required for the coming meeting scheduled in the mid of next year.
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