Mark Ritchie

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This dual strategy has resulted in some success on both fronts. The NGOs have gotten language inserted into numerous trade agreements acknowledging the importance of those issues, but so far with little more than lip service. Meanwhile, the number and diversity of organizations joining the anti-globalization movement have ballooned beyond what anyone imagined.

The cacophony of voices that burst onto the scene in the streets of Seattle two years ago is both a strength and a weakness of the movement, according to Ritchie. By successfully shutting down WTO meetings there, the protests gave NGOs from around the world much-needed time to better organize their efforts to have “civil society”—interests beyond business—represented in these international forums. And the string of protests since then, in Genoa, Quebec City, and elsewhere, has drawn enough media attention that the public is beginning to learn about these issues. He cautions, though, that protests are reactive, disorganized, and, given the media tendency to sensationalize violence, a difficult forum for presenting a clear message.

The challenge now, says Ritchie, is to organize that cacophony of voices so that activists can present a positive alternative vision of global cooperation that is rooted in principles of sustainability, respect for diversity, and social justice. Toward that end, IATP has been working with the 647 NGOs that were registered to attend the November WTO meeting in Doha, Qatar, to create a team of delegates elected by the NGOs to represent what they’ve come to call “civil society groups.”

Recreating the entire system of global economic institutions to give representatives voicing these issues an equal seat at the negotiating table alongside business and governments may sound like a tall order, but Ritchie is undaunted: “This is not the first time this sort of thing has been done. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the World Health Organization, the U.N. High Commission on Human Rights, the Food and Agriculture Organization, just to name a few, all came about because civil society organized and pressured our global institutions for change.”

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