Voices of International Protest

 

 

 

PHILIPPINES
At a gathering of MASIPAG - a network of farmers and peasant organisations - on the Philippine island of Negros in January 1999, 7,000 people protested against the patenting of life. They denounced the Intellectual Properties Treaty of the WTO. Since then, MASIPAG has produced resources opposing genetic engineering and patenting. The farmers don't want to be forced to buy patented seeds every year. They want freedom to breed their own strains of rice and maintain traditional rice varieties.

ECUADOR
Fifty peasant, indigenous and environmental organisations met in Quito in January 1999 to study biotechnology. Afterwards, they published the Latin American Declaration on Transgenic Organisms. The document rejects genetic engineering and patenting. It states: "genetic engineering is a technology driven by commercial interests. It is not necessary. It forces us to become dependent on transnational corporations which control it, putting our autonomy to take decisions about production systems and food security in real danger. In the field of agriculture, especially, there are traditional and alternative technologies which do not pose such risks and which are compatible with the conservation of biodiversity."
BANGLADESH
At a 2001 workshop on patenting in Tangil, the South Asian Network on Food, Ecology and Culture (SANFEC) issued a statement on Intellectual Properties, rejecting patenting of life: "All trees, crops, animals, birds, organisms, and soils are an inalienable part of our worship, our rituals, our celebrations, our joys, our culture of sharing and our loving affinity to each other.... Such gifts must be cared for and respected and only then do we gain our moral right to use them for our livelihood needs. The human, as omnipotent consumer that owns, controls, mutates, displaces and destroys the environment, through privatisations, colonisations and now through intellectual property rights in life-forms, is totally against our culture".
ZAMBIA
Jesuit institutions in Zambia were influential in campaigning for alternatives to GM food aid being provided for famine victims in September/October 2002. "We caution that Zambia's long-term food security and sustainable agriculture would be compromised if GM grain is introduced", said Fr Peter Henriot SJ. A recent study commissioned by the Jesuits highlighted that small farmers risked debt due to the expense of GM seeds and increasing dependency upon foreign seeds, herbicides, and pesticides. In addition, they could not afford to lose European markets for their GM-free export crops.
PAKISTAN
Pakistan's Church-based Jubilee 2000 coalition said in December 1999 that it would oppose WTO efforts to allow rich countries to patent and profit from the biodiversity of developing nations. "Developing countries should defend their sovereignty and biodiversity from the reach of TRIPS" said Aftab Alexander Mughal, executive secretary of the Justice and Peace Commission of the major religious superiors. Workshops, seminars, demonstrations and signature campaigns followed.

TRIBAL PEOPLES
Indigenous peoples' representatives from around the world,
gathered in Geneva in July 1999,
produced a statement expressing concern about TRIPS.

  • It included the following:
    NOBODY can own what exists in nature except nature herself. A human being cannot own its own mother. Humankind is part of Mother Nature. We have created nothing and so we can in no way claim to be owners of what does not belong to us. Yet, time and again, western legal property regimes have been imposed on us, contradicting our own cosmologies and values.
  • WE VIEW WITH REGRET and anxiety how Article 27.3b of the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) of the World Trade Organization (WTO) will further denigrate and undermine our rights to our cultural and intellectual heritage, our plant, animal, and even human genetic resources and discriminate against our indigenous ways of thinking and behaving.
  • IN THE REVIEW of the Article 27.3 (b) of the TRIPS Agreement, therefore, we propose that this Article should be amended to categorically disallow the patenting of life forms.

BACK TO TOP