Picture courtesy of the North African Network for Food SovereigntyOn December 15, 16 and 17, 2017, ATTAC Morocco, a member of the global network for the abolition of illegitimate debts (CADTM), organised a Maghreb seminar on free trade agreements, agriculture and food sovereignty under the slogan: No to colonial agreements, for the defence of people's sovereign right on their agricultural, food and environmental systems. The seminar was held in Agadir, Morocco with the participation of activists coming from Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco.
The seminar comes a few days after the end of the 11th Ministerial Summit of the World Trade Organization (WTO), which hasn’t reached any official agreement. This failure reflects the difficulties of imperialist powers such as the United States (US) and the European Union (EU) in making progress in multilateral agreements, pushing them instead to promote bilateral and regional preferential trade agreements, which maintains a suffocating control over dependent and semi-autonomous colonial states. These trade agreements have deepened the control of multinational companies on agriculture and maritime fishing, exacerbated food speculation, and destroyed subsistence agricultural and fishing systems. Moreover, they accelerated the unlimited quest for the promotion of genetically modified seeds and the generalisation of the export-oriented agriculture and fishing industry. In the global south, International Financial Institutions (IFIs) are pursuing neoliberal policies that further deregulate, open borders to the invasion of foreign capital and subsidised products and ensure the transfer of profits and wealth. These neoliberal dictates are leading to an increase in public debt at the expense of the popular classes who shoulder the burden of austerity policies.
We have come together in this 3-day conference to affirm our support for people's food sovereignty and their right to determine their own food system, a system that ensures the production of healthy food in sufficient quantity while protecting nature and remaining in harmony with it. This system must give priority to the development of local staple foods, shall protect natural seeds and their supply and must implement a popular agrarian reform. The necessary resources for this purpose must be provided through the suspension of debt service payments and through the cancellation of illegitimate public debts.
