from elsewhere
An introduction to Echoes magazine in reactions, facts and issues from all over the world.

ERRATUM Our sincere apologies to Sergio Centeno for omitting to credit his very fine artwork in our issue no. 14 (backcover). Sergio Centeno, from Puerto Rico, created a series of banners and posters to illustrate the WCC's 50th anniversary. They are on display at the WCC headquarters in Geneva. THE LANDMINES' CAMPAIGN STILL NEEDS THE CHURCHES! The statistics are sobering... Millions of mines are scattered over 70 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the Americas. The most severely affected countries are Afghanistan, Angola, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, Croatia, Eritrea, Iraq (Kurdistan), Mozambique, Somalia, Sudan and Vietnam. Landmine infestation around strategic sites can deny access to safe drinking water, arable land and prevent mobile rural vaccination teams from going their rounds. Over the last 55 years, anti-personnel mines have caused more deaths and injuries than nuclear, biological and chemical weapons combined. The International Committee of the Red Cross estimates that 800 people are killed by mines every month and another 1200 are maimed - a total of 2000 victims a month and close to 25,000 a year. The UNICEF estimates that of these victims, 5000 to 6000 are children. What can churches do once the 40 initial ratifications have been achieved? Continue to monitor, monitor, monitor...! Keep up the pressure on governments which have signed and not ratified or which have not signed; monitor the compliance of your government with the Convention requirements on the destruction of stockpiles and the clearance of mined areas;

Table of Contents Editorial Watch out! WTO - facts and info. Martin Robra From the MAI to the Millenium round. Susan George TRIPS, Traps or Dice? RAFI TRIPS and its potential impacts on Indigenous Peoples. Victoria Tauli-Corpuz Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights and Pharmaceuticals. Eva Ombaka Neoliberal Financial Globalization: capitalism's grave illness. Marcos Arruda WCC Statement on Debt Crisis - G8 proposals are insufficient. A new beginning - new challenges, new hopes! Aruna Gnanadason Publications

monitor the commitment of your government to mine victim assistance and humanitarian mine action programmes; report breaches of the Convention to the International or national campaign to ban land mines, or the Red Cross/Red Crescent Society or UNICEF who may inform the United Nations Secretary-General and raise the issue with the media. Finally, keep the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and/or Lutheran World Federation (Ms Rebecca Larson, e-mail: rl@lutheranworld.org), World Alliance of Reformed Churches (Mr Seong-Won Park, e-mail: WCC Contact) and WCC (Ms Mariette Grange, e-mail: WCC Contact) informed of your progress and undertakings. More information and relevant addresses relating to the Landmines campaign can be found here. The LWF and WARC share the same postal address with the WCC: PO Box 2100, 1211 Geneva 2, Switzerland.

TRAITOR TECHNOLOGY: THE "TERMINATOR'S" WIDER IMPLICATIONS In March of 1998, a seed company later to be purchased by Monsanto, Delta and Pine Land Company, in collaboration with the United States Department of Agriculture, was awarded US Patent Number 5,723,765: Control of Plant Gene Expression. Although the patent is broad and covers many applications, one application favoured by the patent's authors is a scheme to engineer crops to kill their own seeds in the second generation, thus making it impossible for farmers to save and replant seeds.

One year later, disturbing new dimensions to the trait control technology have appeared in more than two dozen patent claims from 12 institutes - moving the debate well beyond the Terminator's ability to genetically-alter a plant to render it seed sterile. The Terminator is a threat to agricultural biodiversity, future scientific research, and to the food security of the 1.4 billion rural people who rely on farm-saved seed and community plant breeding. Companies are now working to control several important genetic traits with a number of external chemical catalysts. RAFI has investigated patent claims that connect the Terminator's "suicide sequence" to enhanced herbicide or fertilizer applications (thereby transferring the sterilization costs from the company to the farmer); other Terminator-type claims that reach beyond plants to insects and mammals; and still other patents that explicitly weaken the plant's pest and disease resistance capacity as part of the genetic sterilization process. The ultimate goal appears not to be to force farmers to buy corporate seed every year but to force farmers to pay for their seed every year - capturing enormous cost savings for the company and rendering the commercial merit of aggressive new plant breeding moot. Farmers are becoming trapped in a pattern of biological controls that lead inevitably to bio-serfdom.

For more information see http://www.rafi.org

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Editorial // Watch out! WTO - facts and info. Martin Robra // From the MAI to the Millenium round. Susan George // TRIPS, Traps or Dice? RAFI // TRIPS and its potential impacts on Indigenous Peoples. Victoria Tauli-Corpuz // Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights and Pharmaceuticals. Eva Ombaka // Neoliberal Financial Globalization: capitalism's grave illness. Marcos Arruda // WCC Statement on Debt Crisis - G8 proposals are insufficient. // A new beginning - new challenges, new hopes! Aruna Gnanadason // Publications

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