Rollercoaster negotiations in Doha

Negotiations on the Draft Outcome Document (DOD) were on a roller coaster ride when the European Union (EU) announced, on the evening of the first day, that they would agree to the document as is and stop the gruelling paragraph by paragraph, line by line analysis of the document which had been going on so far. The following morning everyone waited anxiously for the committee of the whole to meet and see how delegations would respond.

Following further meetings and negotiations, the G77 announced that they would accept the EU proposal. At this point, the Russian Federation mentioned concern about one paragraph on climate change, then Japan mentioned concern about three paragraphs, but that overall they could leave the rest of the text alone.

It seemed things were going well, and that a draft would be ready by the afternoon, but then, the US then spoke up with objections and a laundry list of contentious paragraphs. 

This made all the countries that had accepted the EU proposal, including the EU itself, decide to go back to the line-by-line approach.

In light of the blocked negotiations by the US, a few NGO representatives, including Kinda Mohammedia, Sylvia Borren and Adelaide Sosseh amongst others, organized a Group of 192 (G-192) vote with the NGO delegates in the Media Center and a sign on petition available at www.petitiononline.com/G192vote .

Noting attempts to block the current negotiations on the Doha Review Conference on Financing for Development (FfD), civil society advises UN members to take a vote on the President’s proposed Doha outcome document.

The majority of the G192 can and should ignore anti-democratic power-play by the Bush administration.

Ballots were distributed. Votes were cast. More news coming soon...