By Karen Lang, OWINFS and Graciela Rodriguez, IGTN Global Coordinator

During 2009, the debate and action around the current global crisis - in all its dimensions - economic, financial, environmental, social, food, among others - have been the center of much attention. The global movements worldwide have been emphatic in claiming that this is a structural crisis and that the free trade model that the WTO has been imposing and the bilateral or bi-regional agreements are at the root of this crisis.

The upcoming 7th WTO Ministerial, from 30 November to 2 December, ten years after Seattle, is a symbol of the insistence on a failed economic and development model in urgent need of replacement.

It is clear that no matter how much the trade liberalization agenda has proven to be the engine of the failed development model and to have critically vulnerabilized developing countries, it continues to be promoted as something to be pursued.

Trade liberalization without the appropriate redistribution and domestically decided economic strategies benefited only a minority, while weakening women's participation in both political and economic decision-making.

Given all this, it is shocking that Global Governance spaces such as G-20 defends the resumption of the Doha Round of Negotiation as a solution to the multiple crises that trade liberalization has helped to create and spread at the first place.

For all of this, we continue to say: NO TO THE WTO AGENDA! NO TO THE WTO DOHA ROUND!

See IGTN Declaration to the 7th WTO Ministerial.

In this new E-bulletin issue, you may find:

IGTN STATEMENT TO THE WTO MINISTERIAL IN GENEVA FROM 30 NOV - 2 DEC 2009

WTO MINISTERIAL: MORE OF THE SAME. By Karen Lang, OWINFS and Graciela Rodríguez, IGTN Global Coordinator.

IGTN IN ACTION! IGTN Workshop at the Klimatofrum.

IGTN PUBLICATION New IGTN Working Paper! Unlocking the Development Box: Markers Along the way towards a gender sensitive Development Agenda. By Mariama Williams, IGTN Research Associate.

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A new IGTN Working Paper by Mariama Williams, IGTN Research Associate

This paper seeks to lay out, for further exploration and contemplation, the issues, especially as they relate to trade and finance, which are of critical importance to economic development in the global south.

But since the ultimate outcome of such processes are both propositional and conditional on what happens in the global economy, by necessity, there will be spillover to the nature and conditions of policy making in the global economy. The debate and discussion is both necessary and timely given the grave questions that face all nations - rich or poor, as well as, the overall global community in now the twilight of the first decade of the third millennium.