Anti-Globalization Movement: A Call for Global Integration?

Anti-Globalization Movement presentation
Definition:
Anti-globalization Movement is a disputed term referring to the international social movement network that gained widespread media attention after protests against the World Trade Organization in Seattle, WA in late November and early December 1999. Activists and scholars debate whether it constitutes a single social movement or represents a collection of allied groups. Including diverse constituencies with a range of ideological orientations, the global movement is broadly critical of the policies of economic neoliberalism, or “corporate globalization,” that has guided international trade and development since the closing decades of the 20th century. Varied communities organizing against the local and national consequences of neoliberal policies, especially in the global South, connect their actions with this wider effort. Movement constituents include trade unionists, environmentalists, anarchists, land rights activists, organizations promoting human rights and sustainable development, opponents of privatization, and anti-sweatshop campaigners. These groups charge that the policies of corporate globalization have exacerbated global poverty and increased inequality.
Participants base their criticisms on a number of related ideas. What is shared is that participants oppose what they see as large, multi-national corporations having unregulated political power, exercised through trade agreements and deregulated financial markets. Specifically, corporations are accused of seeking to maximize profit at the expense of work safety conditions and standards, labor hiring and compensation standards, environmental conservation principles, and the integrity of national legislative authority, independence and sovereignty.
Many anti-globalization activists call for forms of global integration that better provide democratic representation, advancement of human rights, fair trade and sustainable development and therefore feel the term "anti-globalization" is misleading.

Ideology:
Supporters believe that by the late 20th century those they characterized as "ruling elites" seek to control the expansion of world markets for their own interests; this combination of the Bretton Woods institutions, states, and multinational corporations has been called globalization. In reaction, various social movements emerged to challenge their influence; these movements have been called anti-globalization.

Causes:
People opposing globalization believe that international agreements and global financial institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization, undermine local decision-making. Corporations that use these institutions to support their own corporate and financial interests, can exercise privileges that individuals and small businesses cannot,[10] including the ability to: move freely across borders, extract desired natural resources, and use a wide variety of human resources.
The movement aims for an end to the legal status of "corporate personhood" and the dissolution of free market fundamentalism and the radical economic privatization measures of the World Bank, the IMF, and the World Trade Organization.
Activists are especially opposed to the various abuses which they think are perpetuated by globalization and the international institutions that, they say, promote neoliberalism without regard to ethical standards or environmental protection. Common targets include theWorld Bank (WB), International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and theWorld Trade Organization (WTO) and free trade treaties like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), the Trans Pacific Trade Agreement (TPPA), the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) and the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). In light of the economic gap between rich and poor countries, adherents of the movement claim that free trade without measures to protect the environment and the health and wellbeing of workers will merely increase the power of industrialized nations. Proponents of this line of thought refer to the process as polarization and argue that current neo-liberal economic policies have given wealthier states an advantage over developing nations, enabling their exploitation and leading to a widening of the global wealth gap.
A report by Jean Ziegler, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, notes that "millions of farmers are losing their livelihoods in the developing countries, but small farmers in the northern countries are also suffering" and concludes that "the current inequities of the global trading system are being perpetuated rather than resolved under the WTO, given the unequal balance of power between member countries." [13] Activists point to the unequal footing and power between developed and developing nations within the WTO and with respect to global trade, most specifically in relation to the protectionist policies towards agriculture enacted in many developed countries. These activists also point out that heavy subsidization of developed nations' agriculture and the aggressive use of export subsidies by some developed nations to make their agricultural products more attractive on the international market are major causes of declines in the agricultural sectors of many developing nations.