by Ville-Veikko Hirvelä

Summary in English of
NIGD Discussion Paper 6/2004

The peoples living on our planet should have the right to decide over the use of the resources of the area where they live. Under no circumstances should peoples be deprived of their living conditions. The main task of governments is to ensure the application of human rights and ensure the fulfilment of fundamental freedoms. The commitments to these rights and freedoms should also be reflected in the global economic policies of governments in a way that strives at maintaining life on earth.

Only by ensuring the implementation of its own laws and other agreements so that these do not decrease the degree of democracy or neglect human rights in other countries, can governments demand others to respect universal human rights.

The present political system does not allow for the peoples to take equal part in decisions on a global level. These decisions include issues regarding the distribution or use of global resources. On a global scale, the political power of citizens is limited to voting in parliamentary elections. Nevertheless, parliamentarians do not have the power to decide over the directions of the laws of global governance.

The principles of democracy are based on commonly shared powers and the rights as a people to decide over commonly shared conditions for life. This means in practice that the people decide together and among themselves on who rules and what the governance of the resources in the area they live is. They also decide on investments into the area.

Activities in the area should be placed under equal ruling as far as they make more sustainable use of the resources in the area, maintain life and its preconditions. The present system of 'liberating investments' serves against these principles since it, based on supranational ruling, limits the freedom of peoples to democratically decide over their own conditions of life and risks the sustainable use of the resources in the area.

Conditions of life should not be commercialized by depriving the peoples of their own less commercialised way of life. Traditional ways of life are necessary for many peoples in order for them to ensure the adherence to human rights. Around two thirds of the world's population - or around four billion persons - live in large part outside the formal economies or its growth. The transferral of resources away from - in these economic terms - informal areas into the official economy may lead to increased growth but often on the cost of the peoples of the informal areas. Even though the formal BNP increases, the overall available resources do not increase as such. Rather, the transferral of resources away from the self-sufficient groups of people leads to deteriorating life conditions for the informal groups.

During the past 50 years, world trade has grown 15 fold. Simultaneously, however, the share of the peoples representing the majorities in the world using the world's resources has shrunk. More than three fourths of foreign investments are fusions and aquisitions, activities that do not bring about any kind of permanent increase in resrouces, employment or even in production in the country or area in question. In addition, these activities do not always have positive effects on human development.

'A lack of equal multilateral trade-, investments-, and financial system' is according to the UN TSS-rights committee a global structural hindrance for the implementation of human rights. This has led to 'massive and systematic...neglection of human rights' in developing countries in a way that is beyond the influence of these countries.

For the populations, the globalisation process is the most limiting of processes as regards economic activity, economic innovation and free competition. Globalisation has come to be synonymous to the administration of resources, ownership and the supranational concentration of powers to the groups with the highest purchasing power. This concentration limits means for self-sufficiency for the majorities of the world. The forcing of resources through administrative mechanisms into areas of commercialised consumerism is not free but forced trade. The liberalisation of the world economy preconditions preferential treatment for conditions where commercialised activies are preferred and where thus the conditions for the majorities in the world are limited.

The conditions for the economy and its profitability must be open and free for the proples to decide over through means of democratic mechanisms for decision making and participation. These decisions should be formed to prefer the sustainable use of the resources and trade between areas so that countries and regions can in a renewable manner maintain their own life conditions. The peoples should have the right to hold corporations accountable for their ecological footprints by requiring financial compensation for damages. The local population should also have the right to require tax for the profits generated in the area of operation.

In contrast to the non-durable production and consumption patterns in the industrialised world, the costs for social and environmental aspects should be included into the price of the services and goods so that procedures that save material and resources are made profitable. The right to competition and success should be regulated so that also the less-commercialised, self-sufficient production in line with production according to sustainable development.

During colonial times, rules and regulations were set up by the colonial powers. The colonialist territories became dependent of the global stream of goods and raw materials that these rules and regulations led to. The power of setting these rules and regulations remain with the powerful - former colonial powers - and away from the populations. Economic activity of varying shapes and forms has been replaced with a sort of supranational protectionism, often referred to as 'liberalism', a set of mechanisms that reinforce bureaucratic rules, that limits the economies and free exchange between peoples and populations.

In order for the economy to be free to all peoples, they should be able to freely and directly agree between themselves on issues related to economic trade and transfer in an open way that discloses information on what they echange, where and how this trade inflences the freedom of others. Legal deviations in competition should be corrected in order to promote true competision on equal terms.

The bureaucracy of liberalisation forces countries to commercialise their trade and the right to 'sell' trade contracts for instance according to the ruling of the dispute settlement of the WTO makes countries realise policies that are agains 99 % of the population.
The principles of the WTO are based in the commercialised power. Therefore the WTO is not suitable to promote human rights. The UN has been assigned to evaluate and supervise how business is applying and following sustainable development, the UN should should together with governments see that the activities of the WTO do not have a negative impact on sustainable development.

Governments bear responsibility in providing public services and in ensuring that the conditions of trade are in accordance with human rights. Regardless of the level of income, everyone should have access to basic services regarding health, education, social security, and clean water. Poor persons should not have to invest more than the rich to get these services. The basis for the production, supply, financing and distribution of the services of a welfare state are at risk if these decisions are transferred into the sphere of trade policy. No body's health, access to water, social security, education, or hygiene related to human rights must be endangered due to market prices or conditions.

The competition in services is turned false if its conditions and content are made more commercialised than the persons and their conditions of life the services are meant to serve are. In order to serve the right to health, water, education, social services or hygiene for everyone as an equal right, the efficiency of the service should be measured in terms of how they serve on equal terms to everyone. For instance health care is about caring about the individual, while simultaneously serving a higher goal of a healthy population. This service loses its effects as the caring of other humans is commercialised into a mere product. The efficiency of public services assumes that the population that is being served should have the right to take equal part in the decision making regarding these services.

We need public and independent reporting on the effects of liberalisation on human rights and the environment also with regards the most vulnerable groups. The funding of health, education and social safety nets is suffering from effects caused by tax competition. In order to regulate the activities of multinational corporations we have to construct a comprehensive and functioning system for international taxation by taxing for instance currency transactions and by implementing various ecological taxes. In addition, the operations of fiscal paradises and money laundering should be looked into and prevented. Finally, we must develop a minimum level of global social safety.