Atelier n° 10, article 6
© Vandana Shiva :
The Hindu (New Delhi, India) March 25, 2001
Violence of Globalization
by Vandana Shiva(*)
We thought we had put slavery, holocausts
and apartheid behind us - that humanity would never
again allow dehumanizing and violent systems
to shape the rules by which we live and die. Yet
globalization is giving rise to new slavery,
new holocausts, new apartheid. It is a war against nature,
women, children, and the poor. A war which
is transforming every community and home into a war
zone. It is a war of monocultures against
diversity, of big against small, of war time technologies
against nature.
Technologies of war are becoming the basis
of production in peacetime. Agent Orange, which was
sprayed on Vietnam, is now being sprayed on
our farms as herbicide along with Round up and other
poisons. Plants and animals are being genetically
engineered, thus making our fields sites of
biological warfare. And perverse intelligence
is being applied to terminate life's cycles of renewal by
engineering "Terminator" seeds to be sterile.
As the violence grows, the stress on societies,
ecosystems and living beings is reaching levels of
breakdown. We are surrounded by processes
of ecological and social breakdown.
Witness the events of our times which are
now front page news. Cows in Europe being subject to
bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), millions
of animals being burnt as foot and mouth
disease spreads due to increased trade, farmers
in India committing suicide in thousands, the
Taliban destroying their heritage by vandalizing
the Bamiyan Buddhas, a 15-year-old boy Charles
Andrew Williams shooting his classmates in
a Californian high school, ethnic cleansing.
All these are wars of peacetime, occurring
in our daily lives and the last expression of violence in a
system which has put profit above life, commerce
above justice, ethics and ecology as violent
technologies.
Cows are herbivores, they are not meant to
eat their own carcasses. But, in an industrial system of
factory farming globalized under free trade
rules of agriculture, it was "efficient" to grind up the meat
of infected sheep and cows and turn it into
cattle feed. This has spread BSE among cattle - a
disease that can be transmitted to humans.
Children should be playing with their friends.
Schools are not supposed to be war zones. But a
culture of guns and violence, combined with
one that has focussed so exclusively on commerce and
economic growth and material accumulation,
has left future generations uprooted and unanchored,
afraid and violent. Our children are robbed
of childhood. In Iraq, 12 children die every hour because
of a trade embargo. In other regions, children
are being pushed into prostitution or warfare - the only
options for survival when societies break
down. Across the Third World, hunger and malnutrition has
grown as a result of structural adjustment
and trade liberalization policies.
During 1979-81 and 1992-93, calorie intake
declined by three per cent in Mexico, 4.1 per cent in
Argentina, 10.9 per cent in Kenya, 10.0 per
cent in Tanzania, 9.9 per cent in Ethiopia. In India, the
per capita cereal consumption declined by
12.2 per cent for rural areas and 5.4 per cent for urban
areas. Denying food to the hungry and feeding
the markets is one of the genocidal aspects of
globalization. Countries cannot ensure that
the hungry are fed because this involves laws, policies
and financial commitments which are "protectionist"
- the ultimate crime in the globalization regime.
Denying medicine to the ill so that the global
pharmaceutical industry can make profits is another
aspect of genocide. Under the Trade Related
Intellectual Property agreement of the World Trade
Organization, countries have to implement
patent laws granting exclusive, monopolistic rights to the
pharmaceutical and biotech industry. This
prevents countries from producing low cost generic drugs.
Patented HIV/AIDS medicine costs $15,000,
while generic drugs made by India and Brazil cost
$250-300 for one year's treatment. Patents
are, therefore, literally robbing AIDS victims of their lives.
However, in the world order of globalization
dictated by commerce, greed and profits, it is providing
cures through affordable medicine that is
illegal. India, Brazil and South Africa have been taken to
the WTO Court (the Dispute Settlement Mechanism)
because they have laws that allow low cost
medicine to be produced.
At the World Court of Women, we declare that
laws that force a government to deny citizens the right
to food and the right to medicine are genocidal.
Globalization is a violent system, imposed
and maintained through use of violence. As trade is
elevated above human needs, the insatiable
appetite of global markets for resources is met by
unleashing new wars over resources. The war
over diamonds in Sierra Leonne, over oil in Nigeria
has killed thousands of women and children.
The transfer of people's resources to global
corporations also makes states more militaristic as they
arm themselves on behalf of commercial interests,
and start wars against their own people.
Violence has been used by the government against
tribal people in areas where Bauxite is mined in
Orissa and in Koel Karo, where the building
of a large dam was stopped.
But it is not just non-renewable resources
like diamonds, oil and minerals which global corporations
want to own. They want to own our biodiversity
and water. They want to transform the very fabric and
basis of life into private property. Intellectual
Property Rights (IPRs) on seeds and plants, animals
and human genes are aimed at transforming
life into the property of corporations. While falsely
claiming to have "invented" life forms and
living organisms, corporations also claim patents on
knowledge pirated from the Third World. The
knowledge of our mothers and grandmothers is now
being claimed as inventions of western corporations
and scientists. The use of neem (Azarichta
Indica) as pesticide and fungicide, was claimed
to be an invention by the U.S.D.A. and W.R. Grace.
India challenged it and got the patent revoked.
The seeds and plants of basmati have been claimed
as inventions by a U.S. corporation called
Ricetec. And these are only some examples of biopiracy
which will lead to the absurd situation where
the Third World pays for knowledge that evolved
cumulatively and collectively.
From the Women's Court, we declare that patents
on life and patents based on biopiracy are
immoral and illegal. They should not be respected
because they violate universal principles for
reverence for life and the integrity of a
culture's knowledge systems.
We will not live by rules that are robbing
millions of their lives and medicines, their seeds, plants and
knowledge, their sustenance and dignity and
their food. We will not allow greed and violence to be
treated as the only values to shape our cultures
and our lives. We will take back our lives, as we took
back the right. We know that violence begets
violence, fear begets fear, peace begets peace and
love begets love. We will reweave the world
as a place of sharing and caring, of peace and justice,
not a market place where sharing and caring
and giving protection are crimes and peace and
justice are unthinkable. We will shape new
universals through solidarity, not hegemony.
Women's worlds are worlds based on protection
- of our dignity and self respect, the well - being of
our children, of the earth, of her diverse
beings of those who are hungry and those who are ill. To
protect is the best expression of humanity.
Those who have tried to transform "protection" into a dirty
word, the worst crime of the global market
place, see the protection of health, nutrition, livelihoods all
call for trade sanctions and "punishment"
by the W.T.O. and the World Bank.
To those who have tried to make the protection
of life a crime we say echoing Archbishop Tutu: "You
have already lost. You need to get out of
the way so that we can protect each other, our children and
life on this planet." The future does not
belong to the Merchants of Death - it belongs to the
Protectors of Life.
(*)Excerpts from Vandana Shiva's testimony
at the Women's Court, South Africa, on March 8, 2001.
The author is director, Research Foundation
for Science, Technology and Ecology, New Delhi.
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