The member countries of the World Trade Organization (WTO) meet until December 2 in Geneva, ten years after the crushing defeat of the Seattle meeting in 1999. The roller coaster journey of this powerful organization leaves the viewer confused. The gigantic project of progressive liberalization of all markets covered by the WTO has consistently encountered fierce opposition from the people. But the resumption of negotiations is still considered a necessity by the Heads of State..

In Seattle, the WTO has raised a strong resistance from protesters efficient, organized and violently repressed. In the halls of the convention center, delegates from the South have refused to endorse agreements to their disadvantage. These two groups clashed with unexpected force of a civilized globalization, heralded as inevitable, planned for years by an army of technocrats in the service of transnational companies. The third major WTO meeting, founded in 1995, already well summarized the issues related to the existence of the organization.

Since then, the WTO seeks to move forward despite the disagreements, conflicts of interest, the persistent opposition of social movements from various sources. The Doha, Qatar, following the tragic events of Sept. 11, helped set in motion an ambitious round of negotiations, the Doha Round, including agriculture, tariffs, services, intellectual property rights. This initiative has certainly not been designed with enthusiasm: the negotiations were launched in extremis with an overloaded agenda that many could not followed by games and scenes of secret meetings, all in an atmosphere of wonder in the aftermath of Sept. 11.

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