Youth Are Fed-Up

The Youth Movement’s protest against the World Trade Organisation (WTO) that took place in Seattle, Washington, started in Rome, in 1996, when hundreds of youth from all over the world staged a demonstration on November 14, 1996, on the eve of the offcial opening of the World Food Summit (WFS). Their grievance was with FAO and the organisers of the WFS, for the token youth representation at a forum that was to deal with one of the basic needs of youth - food.

Mindful of youth power, they were under surveilllance from their arrival. ’Copters flew overhead and police visited the ’village’ where they camped. Bureaucratic maneuverings by some of the operatives of the Summit did not help to get more youth representation.

The youth showed how fed-up they were on Nov. 14, when, even under police watch, they were able to gather at the ruins of the Coliseum outside the WFS, to show how they felt about their poor representation at the Summit. The clever bunch formed a walking human fence. Arm in arm, they started to march, black cloths ties around thier mouths indicated how gagged they felt. Silently and slowly they moved forward, carrying placards which decried FAO.

In less than five minutes of the slow march of the youth fence, hundreds of police officers (who were evident on all streets in Rome at that time) arrived on motor cycles, in cars and on foot. They too formed a fence and began to move towards the young people. Both fences stopped within inches of each other. The youths wanted access to the WFS but were denied. They then expressed their concerns verbally, and in songs of solidarity until late in the evening.

Not only the young people were slighted in Rome but the real "food experts" - the farmers - who were also given token representation at the WFS. Feeling slighted, they too took to the streets in a peaceful march. And in a symbolic gesture, they unloaded a few trucks of soil on a sidewlak and planted several different seeds ot demonstrate that food belongs to the people and tha it should be grown anywhere possible, without control by any seed company. Their basic message was that everyone has a right to clean, healthy food, and farmers can speak for themselves.

Food belongs to the world and its peopel and if we do not stop playing ’food gods’ with bio-tech/high-tech resulting in the likes of ’terminator technology,’ we may have plenty ’good-looking’ food but with questionable quality.

FAO, WTO and organisations such as these need to take serious stock of what is happening to and with food. NGOs have to be vigilant and get involved to keep governments from making decisions and taking positions that will hurt us. So while the WTO is concerned with ’Free trade’/trade liberalisation, one of its primary objectives should be to ensure that the food that is traded is of the highest quality possible.