GSO
News Volume 2 Number 5, June 2006
Katherine A.
GSO News is a subscription service provided by the Geneva Social Observatory. We report on developments at WHO, WTO, ILO and many other Geneva-based organizations, as well as other selected developments on global social issues. We hope you enjoy our news service, and we invite your comments and suggestions (please send them to gsonews@gsogeneva.ch). We welcome subscriptions and are now offering a wider choice of subscription payment options. Connect to our subscription page at http://www.gsogeneva.ch/subscribe.asp. We encourage you to share the information on how to subscribe with others. Thank you for your support. The detailed news follows the table of contents below.
GSO News Digest June 2006
1.
The Employment
Relationship at the ILO Conference
2.
Occupational
Safety and Health – a new “Framework* Convention
A new
approach to convention-setting worked a bit better in producing a tripartite
consensus at the ILO Conference.
3.
Human
Rights Council Starts Operating
The
first session of the Human Rights Council featured important messages from
Secretary-General Kofi Annan and High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise
Arbour but few signs of any real change.
4.
Harmony at UNCTAD
In contrast to the first session of its “Mid-Term
Review” in May, the UN Conference on Trade and Development produced a
harmonious conclusion on consensus-building, technical assistance and research
and analysis at its second session in June.
A high-level panel has also produced a report with recommendations for
future action. But the impasse over
the role of “policy space” for developing countries remains to be worked out
over the extended summer hiatus. A
third session meets in September. .
5.
UNAIDS
Programme Coordinating Board
The UNAIDS 2006 Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic was issued just prior to
the Special Session of the UN General Assembly to review progress on the
Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS made at the High-Level Session of 2001.
6.
WTO Negotiations Update
The refocus of deadlines for WTO negotiations is now on end
of June for “modalities”
in agriculture and NAMA spurs. Ministers
are in town for a long hot weekend, and Lamy tries to recharge the batteries by
introducing the “three 20s.”
7.
WIPO Tries Again on
a Development Agenda
The World Intellectual Property Organization has another go
at merging issues in search of a consensus on intellectual property and
development.
8.
Looking Ahead to the
Economic and Social Council
9.
Personnel
Changes
GSO
News reports on
recent changes in Geneva-based international organizations.
10.
Forthcoming
Events
A
listing of events in June and July 2006 taking place in
GSO
News June 2006
1.
The Employment Relationship at the ILO
Conference
The employment relationship has been a contentious issue for close to a decade at the ILO. The 95th ILO Annual Conference finally adopted a Recommendation on the subject in June but did so over the objections of the Employers’ bench. A compromise reached in 2003 for proceeding with drafting such a Recommendation was interpreted by the Employers Group to be limited to the issue of new policy on “disguised employment” only. However, the new Recommendation prescribes a framework for national policies on “effectively establishing the existence of an employment relationship and on the distinction between employed and self-employed workers, combating disguised employment relationships and ensuring standards applicable to all forms of contractual relationships.” The Employers Group further argued that the Recommendation sets universal criteria and indicators and a presumption of employment that treats independent workers as employees. In today’s world, the complexity of direct employment, indirect employment through subcontractors, individual contracts for work without a specific employment contract and even piece-work arrangements calls for guidance on how to ensure that employers deliver decent wages and working conditions. The Recommendation was adopted with a recorded vote of 329 to 94 with 40 abstentions. See www.ilo.org for press releases and Conference reports.
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2.
Occupational Safety and Health – a new
“Framework* Convention
A new approach to convention-setting worked a bit better in producing a tripartite consensus at the ILO Conference – that is, where Employers, Workers and Governments all agreed. This is the “Promotional Framework Convention on Occupational Safety and Health” and an accompanying “Recommendation.” Over a number of years in the making, the promotional nature of this convention indicates a new approach to standard-setting at the ILO. The ILO has well over 180 conventions, or binding international treaties, and 150 recommendations, or guidance documents for national policy, on workers rights and other labour standards. This is its main function, to serve as a global standard-setting body on labour policy, but many of its conventions have become outdated or were so over-reaching as to be deemed unratifiable by most countries. So a promotional framework convention is one of the alternative modes of standard-setting that the ILO is exploring to provide flexibility for updating and interpretation. Occupational safety and health standards are considerable in number, including one that is a sort of “umbrella” standard (Convention 155), and this is an area where other approaches to implementing standards (such as codes of conduct and monitoring guidelines) have been very prolific. The new “Promotional Framework Convention on Occupational Safety and Health” calls on member States to develop national occupational safety and health programmes and to adopt a “preventative safety and health culture”.
The consensus was somewhat disrupted by an unanticipated resolution on asbestos, calling for the elimination of any future use of asbestos and the identification and proper management of any asbestos currently in place. The ILO already has an Asbestos Convention, but the Workers Group pushed for this additional resolution on the grounds that this is a particularly hazardous product, banned in most industrialized countries but spreading in use in developing countries, with over 100,000 deaths annually worldwide directly attributable to exposure to asbestos. As a product used in building and construction, it is a serious health and safety hazard, but the Employers Group protested that the resolution should have been preceded by more detailed study of actual impact and means for addressing the problem. The resolution, nonetheless, was adopted. See www.ilo.org for press releases and Conference reports.
3.
Human
Rights Council Starts Operating
The
first session of the Human Rights Council featured important messages from
Secretary General Kofi Annan and High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise
Arbour but few signs of any real change.
The Secretary General’s opening speech on 19 June was widely covered in
the media for his emphasis on the importance of universality and objectivity and
the need to eliminate double standards. Not
so widely covered was his emphasis on hunger, ignorance and disease as concerns
for the Council as well as political repression.
He called for the Council to add a procedure for receiving complaints
under the Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the need for
legal safeguards for economic and social development.
Commissioner Arbour, for her part, cited the “four freedoms” that
Franklin Delano Roosevelt had promoted – from want, fear, expression and
worship. She spoke about the
interdependence of all rights – pertaining to freedom from poverty,
discrimination and conflict, and the need for economic and social development
and a fair distribution of resources. GSO
News highlights these points as a sign of where the new Human Rights Council
is likely to have its most significant impact.
Secretary General Annan reminded the Council members that the Council
must prove itself within five years, at which time the General Assembly will
decide whether to make the Council a principal organ of the UN.
The
first session concluded on 30 June with a programme of action for the next year
and two intersessional working groups, one on the review of mandates authorized
by the previous Human Rights commission, and the other on the modalities for the
universal periodic review. Two new
covenants, recommended by the Commission, were also adopted – one is the
International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced
Disappearances, and the other is the International Covenant for the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples. The next session
of the Council will be from 18 to 29 September.
In the interim, the working groups will make some headway, mostly in
early September, and the old Sub-Commission for the Promotion and Protection of
Human Rights, a subsidiary body of individual experts of the old Commission,
will meet for its last regular session from 25 July to 12 August 2006 in Geneva.
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4.
Harmony at UNCTAD
In contrast to the first session of its “Mid-Term Review” in May, the UN Conference on Trade and Development produced a harmonious conclusion on research analysis, consensus-building, and technical assistance at its second session in June. A high-level panel has also produced a report with 21 recommendations for future action. The Panel of Eminent Persons, chaired by Fernando Enrique Cardoso, the former President of Brazil, notes that UNCTAD is not a player in negotiations on global finance, trade and investment but that it could recover its standing if it concentrated on being a “think tank on development issues.” The Panel agreed that UNCTAD is the “premier international organization addressing problems of trade and development” and is well suited to provide an “investment for development” framework. It urged the streamlining of its commissions to two, one on trade and one on investment, with a possible third commission on technology. (See “Report of the Panel of Eminent Persons” at http://www.unctad.org/sections/edm_dir/docs/osg20061_en.pdf.)
Meanwhile, the Trade and Development Board urged the formation of yet another commission, this one on “Globalization and Systemic Issues.” But the impasse over the role of “policy space” for developing countries remains to be worked out over the extended summer hiatus. One clue to how this might be resolved is the language approved at the second session by instructing the Secretariat to carry out its research and analysis by “Recognizing the need for diversity in national policies, placing greater emphasis on practical solutions and policy options for developing countries and countries with economies in transition to cope with existing and emerging development challenges.” (Para 11(a) of “Strengthening the Three Pillars of UNCTAD, Agreed outcome” at http://www.unctad.org/en/docs/tdsxxiiil4_en.pdf.)
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5.
UNAIDS
Programme Coordinating Board
The UNAIDS Programme Coordinating Board (PCB) met on 27 to 28 June in Geneva and adopted an array of decisions, recommendations and conclusions based in large part on the guidance from the UN 2006 Political Declaration on HIV/AIDS at the High-Level Session of the UN General Assembly on 31 May to 2 June. See http://data.unaids.org/pub/Report/2006/20060615_HLM_PoliticalDeclaration_ARES60262 _en.pdf. The 2006 Political Declaration was a reaffirmation of the 2001 Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS but featured updated concerns about the continued expansion and feminization of the pandemic and the commitment to scale-up to universal access by 2010. The PCB is a unique multistakeholder board, including representatives from UN agencies and civil society, that sets policy for UNAIDS. The June meeting approved UNAIDS action on promoting universal access by 2010, setting ambitious national targets including interim targets for 2008, gender assessments of national programmes, and mobilizing more resources for the pandemic, estimated to be $20 to 23 billion a year by 2010. In both the PCB decisions and the UN Declaration, one finds a strong statement in support of the TRIPS flexibilities for access to drugs that has been directed at the pharmaceutical industry. Two issues that resulted in a compromise were a proposal put forward by US First Lady Laura Bush on creating an International Testing Day and another proposal to merge the different national coordinating entities that don’t exactly coordinate with each other. On the first, the Board noted that it might be a major strain on national resources in developing countries to encourage everyone to be tested on the same day but agreed that it is a “way to promote greater access to voluntary HIV counseling and testing, organized with the participation of civil society, especially networks of people living with HIV and AIDS and requests UNAIDS to analyze potential impact of and implementation issues relating to an international testing day”. The Board had a proposal to call for the integration of the national coordinating authorities in each country with the Country Coordinating Mechanisms that the Global Fund works through. However, this was a bit too meddlesome in national policymaking, and the final decision calls for efforts to “at least reduce duplication” and to consider the possibility of mergers. See “Decisions, Recommendations and Conclusions of the 18th Meeting of the Programme Coordinating Board” at http://data.unaids.org/pub/Report/2006/PCB_18_06-finaldecisions0628_en.pdf.
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6.
WTO Negotiations Update
The refocus of deadlines for WTO negotiations is now on end
of June for the central
“triangle” of agricultural market access, agricultural subsidies and market
access for industrial goods, but some are already looking to the end of July as
the “real” deadline. Ministers
are in town for a long hot weekend, and Director-General Pascal Lamy has tried
to recharge the batteries for an energetic push by introducing the “three
20s.” For the US, he wants to see
an improved offer on cutting domestic farm subsidies to something well below
“$20 billion,” while the EU is urged to improve its offer on agricultural
tariffs by moving closer to the request made by the “G-20” and the
developing countries are being urged to accept “20%” in the “Swiss
formula” for tariff cuts on industrial goods.
These are the three issues, and the negotiators and varied lobbyists are
certainly familiar with all the arcane terminology of trade.
For the rest of us, it’s easy to be talked down to.
It seems that the latest US offer, made in October of last year, was to
cut their domestic farm subsidy ceiling by 53%, but since US actual subsidies
are currently around that same proposed ceiling, this isn’t much of a real
cut. (One has to assume that the
current ceilings in WTO rules were set very high.)
The G-20 has argued that this ceiling needs to be cut by at least 75% to
have any impact, while the EU has asked the
As for
the EU, their latest offer was to cut their farm tariffs by 46%, while the G-20
had countered by asking the EU to cut their farm tariffs by 54% and the
Meanwhile,
the eyes are on a new grouping, the G-6. This
includes the central players of US, EU,
The EU
Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson has stirred things up a bit by arranging a
meeting of his national constituent ministers for 1 July on the services
negotiations, as well as a proposal for a “new round” on energy!
Are these maneuvers deliberate distractions from the impasse on
agriculture and industrial goods, or are they part of a bigger timeframe?
It should be noted that the separate track on liberalization of trade in
services has an end of July deadline that is seen by many, including apparently
Commissioner Mandelson, as the “real” deadline for a Doha Round deal.
While the central “triangle” on agriculture and industrial goods
needs to be kept alive, there are major benefits to be derived from services
liberalization (and other aspects of the complex plethora of trade issues) to
justify an end-of-July focus instead of an end-of-June focus.
And of course, the really definitive deadline is 1 July 2007, when the
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7.
WIPO Tries Again on a Development Agenda
The World Intellectual Property Organization has another go
at merging issues in search of a consensus on intellectual property and
development. The second
session of the WIPO Provisional Committee on Proposals Related to a WIPO
Development Agenda (the PCDA) met from 26 to 30 June 2006 in
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8.
Looking ahead to the Economic and Social
Council
The UN
Economic and Social Council meets in annual July session in
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9.
Personnel
Changes
GSO
News
reports on
recent changes in Geneva-based international organizations.
As noted last month, we can confirm that the WIPO Coordination Committee
has approved the appointment of a new senior management slate.
This includes four Deputy Directors-General:
Francis Gurry (Australia), Michael Keplinger (USA), Pilippe Petit
(France) and Narendra Sabharwal (India); and three Assistant Directors-General: Wang Binzing (China), Geoffrey Onyeama (Nigeria) and Ernesto Rubio
(Uruguay), effective 1 December 2006. Deputy
Directors-General Rita Hayes (USA) and Geoffrey Yu (
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10.
Forthcoming
Events
A
listing of events in June and July 2006 taking place in
Economic
and Social Council of the UN:
3 -5
July
ECOSOC High-Level Segment on Employment and Decent Work
6-10
July ECOSOC Coordination
Segment on Sustained economic growth for social development, including the
eradication of poverty and hunger
11-13
July ECOSOC Operational Activities Segment
on Funding coordination
14-19
July ECOSOC Humanitarian Affairs Segment,
including emergencies and natural disasters
19-27
July ECOSOC General Segment
27-28
July ECOSOC Conclusions
Other:
3-8
July Codex
Alimentarius Commission 29th Session
11
July World
Population Day with a theme of “Being Young Is Tough”
15-17
July G8
Summit with three themes of energy security, education and infectious
diseases (
25
July- Sub-Commission
on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights
12
Aug
1-7
Aug World
Breastfeeding Week with the theme “Code watch:
25 years of protecting breastfeeding”
3-13
Aug Fêtes de Genève
13-17
Aug XVI International AIDS Conference with
the theme “Time to Deliver” (