By Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabhei; Chief Negotiator in the Biosafety Protocol for the Africa Group and the Like-Minded Group The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety came into force on II September 2003. Those of us who have Africa's interests at heart do so because we are Africans, because we love Africa, and live and work in it. Even if we do not live in it, we love Africa and we work on issues of importance to it.
We see this day as special. Africa took the negotiations of the Protocol very seriously because its survival and prosperity are intimately linked to the health of its people, its agricultural systems and its environment.
We take this day to renew our resolve to continue to pursue what is important for Africa and the world. We will pursue that which was left unresolved by the Protocol. We will use our unity of purpose to make up for what has been left wanting, and we will continue to confront the forces which selfishly pursue the exercise of power and the capture of trade advantages. We do this because we want a healthier and more equitable world for all humans together with all other forms of life on Earth that have always lived together.
To this effect: I. We urge the African Group on Biosafety to continue negotiating for an effective system of liability and redress with regard to GMOs and their products. We also urge them to negotiate for a fully informative system of labelling and tractability of GMOs and their products. and for a reassuring system of compliance that will protect Africa not only from aberrant parties. but also from non-parties.
2. We call on the African states that have yet to ratify the Protocol to do so as soon as possible, and on all African states to make their biosafety laws based on the African Union1s Model Law on Safety in Biotechnology, This must be done to bring in a uniform biosafety system that protects the whole of the African continent. This is essential because GMOs recognise no borders. A mistaken release in one country; may reach the whole continent just as a fire reaches an entire dry grassland.
3. In particular, we want to point out to all African countries that they need to apply the precautionary principle (a) in regulating the transit of GMOs through their territories and refuse such transit to dangerous GMOs. 1 (0) in restricting GMOs for contained use to stringent laboratory conditions from which accidental escape of GMOs is impossible[2] and: (c) in subjecting all GMOs intended for use as pharmaceuticals to the Advance Informed Agreement (AlA) procedure until there is an international law to govern them. or an international organization to be held responsible for their environmental impactsl3l. We would like to point out that the World Health Organisation is not entrusted with overseeing,' the environmental impacts of GMOs that are meant to be used as pharmaceuticals.
4. We call upon African countries to make their biosafety as protective as their natural, social and economic environments require. noting the fact the Protocol empowers them to do so(4).
5. We call upon all African countries to apply the AlA procedure to all other GMOs. In the case of GMOs used for food. feed or processing. notification is to be done through the Biosafety Clearing House(5).
6. We call upon all African countries not to be intimidated into making decisions upon notification as part of the AlA Procedure when their capacities do not allow a competent implementation (6). They are able to ask for as long a time as they need for a hilly considered response complete with appropriate risk assessment (7).
7. We call upon the United Nations Environment Programme and the African Union as well as each African country to take capacity building seriously to implement this highly technical Protocol effectively.
8. As co-residents of the same biosphere but concerned with different and diverse natural environments in Africa we beg of the United States of America to let African countries implement the Protocol without pressure that disregards the Biosafety Protocol. Such pressure has already been shown by the pushing of GM food aid upon African countries, even though it was clear that these countries did not have biosafety systems in place to deal with the imports as required by the Protocol.
9. We also call upon the United States of America to keep its trade fight with the European Union out of Africa. We find it a distortion of facts to blame Europe for Africa1s caution in handling GM crops. including those coming as food aid. It must be noted that Africa's awareness of its poverty, low level of technical capacity and environmental complexity moved the African Group on Biosafety to come up with the first proposed draft Biosafety Protocol in 1996. long before any European country did so. This was because Africa is aware of its vulnerability and is thus afraid of adventurism in GMOs. We find it unfair and repulsive to use Europe's guilty feeling for Africa's weakness to blackmail Europe into accepting American GE crops in the name of Africa. We would prefer the elephants that are America and Europe to fight elsewhere and let the grass that is Africa be.
10. We also note. therefore. the diversion of biosafety,' issues into the World Trade Organisation in this fight between America and the EU. remembering that such a diversion was attempted in Seattle in 1999. and we call upon the world to reject it at Cancun as happened in Seattle. We hope that all attempts to kill the environment to foster trade died in Johannesburg a year ago. and will remain buried there.
11. We congratulate the African Group in the WTO negotiations for their insistence on the recognition of Community Rights and for their rejection of the patenting of living things and life processes. Such patenting, coupled with 3the reversal of the burden of proof' on the patent infringer (8) will otherwise introduce patented genes into the crops of small-holder African farmers. criminalise them, and force them into becoming users of seeds patented by foreign based transnational corporations. Africa's food sovereignty will be lost and the survival of all Africans will be subjected to the whims of patent-tiling transnational corporations. We wish the African negotiators strength in the forthcoming negotiations in Cancun.