APWLD’s Women Interrogating Trade & Corporate Hegemony (W.I.T.C.H) OC
Present
Online Webinar
Trading Women’s Rights Away:
Mega Free Trade Agreements of the 21st Century
MONDAY, 19th September 2016
Register here by Thursday, 15th September 2016
On 19th September 2016, world leaders from 193 countries will be gathered in the halls of the United Nations headquarters in New York for the United Nations Summit for Refugees and Migrants. The summit comes at a time where the world faces an unprecedented movement of refugee and migrants exacerbated by interrelated crisis of economy, energy, food, environment, climate and capitalist-driven conflicts. Ironically, happening parallel to this Summit is the UN Private Sector Forum where 350 CEO’s from some of the world’s largest multi-national corporations come together to increase the role of the business sector and the multi-national corporations in advancing sustainable development.
The growing role of multi-national corporations have been taking place, simultaneously with the growing prioritization of corporate’s interests over the interests of the people. The enormous influence of corporate lobbyists and the related power imbalances in various spaces – undermines democracy and all too frequently results in the postponement, weakening or blocking of urgently needed progress to deliver genuine development justice to the people.
On September 2015 last year, just week after the UN concludes the Sustainable Development Goals/Agenda2030, 12 countries from the Pacific Rim conclude the negotiations of the very secretive Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). Today, 16 other countries from the Asia-Pacific continues to negotiate in secret the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), another trade agreement which like the TPP, will undermine human rights and institutionalize inequalities. The webinar will discuss the movement of the neo-liberal agenda, the multilateral arena of WTO to that of regional and bilateral trade agreements such as TPP and RCEP. How both agenda will perpetuate inequalities and threaten women and their communities.
Join APWLD’s online webinar as we discuss the evolution of the 21st century mega free trade agreements through a process completely devoid of women. How it cements corporate power and control people’s lives – over women’s access and control over our land, resources, seeds and local knowledge, our right to health and decent work.
This webinar is a lead up to the “No RCEP Regional Week of Actions” to take place on the 10th – 16th of October 2016. Women’s organization, trade unions, farmers and health workers from across the region is coming together to rise and mobilize against the RCEP and calling for an absolutely end to unfair trade agreement such as the RCEP, and for a framework that aims to reduce inequalities of wealth, power and resources between countries, between rich and poor, and between men and women.
MONDAY, 19th September 2016
Karachi (Pakistan – Sindh) 11:00
Delhi (India – Delhi) 11:30
Dhaka (Bangladesh) 12:00
Yangon (Myanmar) 12:30
Bangkok (Thailand) 13:00
Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia)/ Beijing (China)/ Manila (Philippines) 14:00
Phnom Penh (Cambodia)/ Jakarta (Indonesia)/ Ho Chi Minh (Vietnam) 13:00
Seoul (South Korea)/ Tokyo (Japan) 15:00
Suva (Fiji) 16:00
To register for this webinar: https://goo.gl/forms/MVHSM1B2vSUpyk6G3
