T

he ninth World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Meeting has come and gone. Held in Bali recently, the WTO succeeded in pushing through a highly imbalanced '€œBali package'€ that delivered an agreement on trade facilitation and in exchange tied the hands of developing countries in their ability to guarantee food security for their populations in the coming years.

Established in 1995, one of the stated goals of the WTO was '€œto improve the welfare of the peoples of the member countries'€. There were many promises to bring development to developing and least developed countries (LDCs) by eliminating trade-distorting subsidies in the developed countries, ending dumping or the practice of flooding markets with goods below the cost of their production and providing meaningful special and differential treatment.

Now, 18 years later, all of those promises remain unfulfilled. The long-standing demand of developing countries for the US and EU to eliminate their export subsidies in agriculture remains a worthless declaration. The Bali package refers to these export subsidies, and acknowledges that it has missed the 2013 deadline, '€œWe regret that it has not been possible to achieve this objective in 2013 as envisaged in that Declaration.'€ But it then commits to nothing except '€œdedicated discussions'€ for the coming years.

Another main demand has been in the issue of cotton, particularly by the African countries and again, the missed deadline was simply regretted, '€œWe regret that we are yet to deliver on the trade-related components of the 2005 Hong Kong Ministerial Declaration, but agree on the importance of pursuing progress in this area.'€

Yet, in return, the developing countries committed to a legally binding agreement on trade facilitation, an issue that was clearly rejected in the 2003 Cancun Ministerial Conference and yet is now at the centerpiece of the first WTO agreement.

Trade facilitation, an agreement that eases customs and border procedures, has high costs for developing countries and clearly benefits the Transnational Corporations (TNCs) that already control the majority of global trade. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) World Investment Report 2013 states, '€œTransnational Corporations coordinated Global Value Chains account for some 80 percent of global trade.'€

Lesson learned: All the promises of delivering development, improving the welfare of the peoples and addressing the concerns of the developing countries were empty.

The first agreement after 18 years of the WTO, binds developing countries into a costly trade facilitation agreement in exchange for worthless declarations on special and differential treatment and promises of dedicated discussions on removing export subsidies.

Center stage in Bali was the big debate on the '€œpeace clause'€ in the agriculture negotiations. India and the G33 grouping of developing countries, which includes Indonesia and the Philippines, had originally demanded an amendment of the WTO agreement on agriculture so that they could provide domestic support to their poor farmers for food security and public stockholding purposes without breaching the limits established by the agreement.

The US, EU and other developed countries found this issue too big for Bali and proposed instead a peace clause or simply put, a temporary measure that allows India and others to breach the 10 percent limit set for developing countries without risk of being sued by other WTO member countries under the WTO dispute settlement mechanism.

This is where the hypocrisy of the WTO comes in. The US and the EU, through various loopholes, are able to circumvent their 5 percent limit under the agreement on agriculture and provide billions of dollars in domestic support to their agricultural producers '€” the US with US$130 billion in 2010 and the EU with ¤79 billion ($109 billion) in 2009.

Most importantly, the right to food is a universal human right. Why do countries need to beg the WTO for the right to guarantee food security for their people in the first place? Agriculture should never have been included in the WTO negotiations.

In the end, a peace clause that violates the right to food was agreed. It states, '€œin pursuance of public stockholding programs for food security purposes existing as of the date of this decision'€ which means any developing country'€™s food security program after the Bali meeting will not be permitted under the WTO.

This jeopardizes the right to food and the responsibility of governments to guarantee, through all available means, their peoples'€™ food security. Also, since India was the only one who had declared a program that would exceed the limits, this peace clause is seen to only apply to that country.

Furthermore, the peace clause has several restrictive conditions on what crops can be included and the extensive information requirements needed. It does not include the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (ASCM), which means that countries can still get sued anyway. Lastly, there is a promise of a permanent solution but it is not at all clear what that would be in reality and it is still subject to future negotiations.

Lesson learned: Developed countries can get away with billions of dollars in subsidies while developing countries have to trade away the right to food in order to get a paltry peace clause.

The global peasant movement La Via Campesina with 200 million members worldwide, has long called for the WTO to get out of agriculture. In Bali, social movements from Asia and around the world called for an end to the WTO and in its place to establish economic justice. Food cannot be treated as a commodity that can simply be traded, sold and priced according to the highest bidder.

In Bali, the main lesson was clear: free trade trumps all, even the right to food. The historic Bali package of the WTO jeopardizes food sovereignty for years to come.