Jamaica Fact Sheet

Legal and Regulatory Analysis of the World Trade Organization And Forecast of the Free Trade Area of the Americas

Jamaica has supported international treaties to guarantee rights and commit to sustainable development. Nationally, Jamaica has passed legislation aimed at enshrining basic rights into the Constitution and into national law. In response to the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, Jamaica has enacted legislative changes that enhance women’s status including laws relating to child maintenance, heritance, citizenship and matrimony.

As governments pursue a number of steps to improve sustainable development and women’s rights, they are simultaneously pursuing international trade and investment agreements. What happens when trade commitments conflict with other commitments? How can policymakers reconcile the direct tension and potential for conflict between trade agreements and other treaties in the areas of human rights, the environment, and women’s equity?

The World Trade Organization and Jamaica

Agriculture and Food Security

One of the most famous examples of how trade may contradict other development and food security policies is the World Trade Organization ruling on Caribbean bananas. The WTO sided with theU.S. in ruling against the European Lome Treaty which granted a preference to banana imports from European colonies in the Caribbean. The U.S. argued that European preferences for bananas from the Caribbean and other former colonies discriminated against U.S. companies in Central America.

Education and the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS)

Jamaican government opened its higher education sector to foreign providers and registered no exceptions when it did so. As a result, several U.S. colleges and universities including Florida International University and the University of Phoenix have begun to offer “distance learning” programs in Jamaica – offering instruction via the internet. Because the Jamaican government registered no exceptions when it opened this area to foreign providers, these colleges could conceivably demand the same subsidies that the Jamaican government provides to the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona – a regional university with satellite campuses in Trinidad & Tobago and other islands. The Jamaican government subsidizes 80 percent of the costs of tertiary education for its citizens and if the foreign schools are successful in pursuing their demands, the government will soon be subsidizing U.S. – based universities.

This shift in government resources to foreign institutions may reduce the amount the government can provide each institution, which in turn, may lead to layoffs or tuition increases. Since Jamaican women are the majority of college students, any increase in fees would disproportionately affect them and their ability to receive a higher education. Moreover, if resources are drained from the education budget to subsidize foreign college programs, this may divert important resources away from primary and secondary education. This would conflict with CEDAW, Article 10 which states that governments should ensure equal educational opportunities for women and men.

Free Trade Area on the Americas Forecast

This analysis examines the November 2003 draft text of the Free Trade Area on the Americas (FTAA) negotiations. The FTAA agreement aims to create a free trade area between 34 countries in the Western Hemisphere (excluding Cuba). FTAA negotiators consider a country’s WTO commitments to be the floor for negotiations. Therefore, commitments made within the FTAA should strive to go beyond what countries agreed to within the WTO framework. Negotiators hope to complete the FTAA by the end of 2004 and launch the agreement by 2005.

Government Procurement

In 2002, Jamaica passed a “Policy on Public Sector Procurement”, which aims to enable the Jamaican government to use its purchasing power to stimulate local producers and to use government contracts as part of a national development strategy. The Jamaican policy is akin to the U.S. “Buy America Act” which restricts federal purchases to U.S. products and was exempt from NAFTA. Yet, the FTAA Agreement on Government Procurement could negate the Jamaican public sector procurement policy depending on how the policy is implemented and what procurement commitments Jamaica makes under the FTAA.

Other areas of concern:

• As Jamaica seeks new forms of employment for its young women, particularly those without much education or access to other types of work, the FTAA labor provisions do not provide countries with any recourse to redress violations of labor rights.

• Jamaica’s tourism industry employs many Jamaicans and generates foreign exchange. Yet, depending on what limits Jamaica puts on its liberalization of the sector, Jamaica may not be able to control the number of hotels that are built on its coastline, which may damage the

natural beauty of the island and the environment.

Conclusion

Jamaica’s economic and social crisis has many factors, but it is clear that the WTO commitments that Jamaica has undertaken have hindered the ability of the State to act in the public interest. As a small, island economy, Jamaica is already vulnerable to the exigencies of external forces. Jamaica must be able to maintain needed flexibility to act in the interest of the public.

Policy Recommendations

The Women’s Edge Coalition and CAFRA believe that the TIR analysis illuminates clear policy recommendations for the governments of the U.S. and Jamaica as they continue negotiations for the FTAA:

1. Conduct a Trade Impact Review before completing the FTAA.
2. Continue and increase efforts to collect data disaggregated by gender.
3. Create a “Lawyers Without Borders” organization to increase the technical capacity to analyze, negotiate, and respond to trade agreements.
   
   

The U.S. and Jamaica Should:

1. Exempt health care, basic education, water, and electricity delivery from services negotiations.
2. Reassert the right to regulate and to promulgate new laws within the FTAA text.
3. Remove elimination of performance requirements from text.
4. Support Article 6 Treatment of the Differences in the Level of Development and Size of Economics of the Government procurement text.
5. Strengthen the respect for labor rights.
6. Assert the legal dominance of human rights over trade.