AFSC Position on Trans Pacific Partnership

Five Quaker organizations from Europe and the United States have expressed concern about the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the controversial ‘mega’ trade deal being negotiated between the European Union and the United States. 
It is the first time that Quaker organisations, working on both sides of the Atlantic, have spoken out together about such a trade treaty.

American Friends Service Committee, Friends Committee on National Legislation, Quaker Council for European Affairs, Quaker United Nations Office and Quaker Peace & Social Witness, have sent a statement to Prime Minister David Cameron, government representatives and trade officials. They say that TTIP negotiations are prioritising the prospect of short-term economic gain over the longer-term factors necessary to human wellbeing and protection of the Earth.

The statement comes in the context of building opposition to TTIP, as controversial, confidential negotiation documents were leaked into the public domain and the French government has warned that it is considering blocking the deal.

The Quakers say that TTIP will almost certainly hamper international commitments to tackle climate change and global poverty, including the recently agreed Paris Agreement on Climate change and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Quakers are calling for a fundamental rethinking of global trade rules and for future trade deals to be aligned with the demands of these commitments. 

The Quakers also assert mechanisms such as the Investor State Dispute Settlement mechanism or Investment Court System hand too much power to large companies, making them “fundamentally antidemocratic in nature and therefore unacceptable.”

“Protections for investors included in TTIP, such as the Investor State Dispute Settlement Mechanism, threaten members’ ability to enact policies to protect people and the environment,” said Kathryn Johnson, representative of the American Friends Service Committee. “This alone is reason enough to reject TTIP as we’ve seen how these mechanisms have been used to undermine environmental, health and other policies and extract billions of dollars from tax payers.”

The Quaker statement also highlighted concerns about the lack of transparency around the deal, the negotiations for which remain largely secret. “It is impossible for civil society groups to get meaningful information about the negotiations,” said Andrew Lane, Representative at the Quaker Council for European Affairs based in Brussels. “Even more disconcerting is the uncertainty about whether or not the national parliaments of EU countries will have adequate opportunity to scrutinise the deal.  If TTIP negotiations continue it’s vital that elected representatives have proper access to information and a genuine opportunity to reject the deal if they consider it to threaten the well-being of people, or the planet.”
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The American Friends Service Committee is a Quaker organization that includes people of various faiths who are committed to social justice, peace and humanitarian service. Its work is based on the belief in the worth of every person and faith in the power of love to overcome violence and injustice.

Notes to editors

·         Quakers are known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Their commitment to equality, justice, peace, simplicity and truth challenges them to seek positive social and legislative change.

·         Trade for well-being, not just for profit: A shared Quaker statement on TTIP and free trade agreements can be read in full at www.quaker.org.uk/trade 

·         The Quaker Council for European Affairs brings a Quaker vision of just relationships to the European Union and the Council of Europe. QCEA has worked on trade issues and TTIP since 2013, advocating for trade deals to prioritise the well-being of people and planet, above profit.

·         The American Friends Service Committee is a Quaker organisation that promotes lasting peace with justice, as a practical expression of faith in action. This work has included decades of grassroots education and advocacy for trade policies that place human dignity, economic justice, and environmental sustainability the heart of the global economy.

·         The Quaker United Nations Office works with the UN, multilateral organisations, government delegations, and non-governmental organisations, to address the interconnections between trade, investment, intellectual property rules and how they relate to poverty, hunger and food insecurity. QUNO engages with all stakeholders from small-scale farmers to trade negotiators, providing safe spaces to explore how the food system could be made to work for the whole of the world’s population.

·         Quaker Peace & Social Witness works with and on behalf of British Quakers to turn faith into action. It is a department of Quakers in Britain, whose representative body discussed TTIP in July and December 2015 concluding that it had “deep concerns about the impact of the proposed agreement”.

·         The Friends Committee on National Legislation is the nonpartisan Quaker lobby in the public interest, and works with the United States Congress to change government policies that perpetuate all forms of injustice. FCNL has worked within interfaith and multi-sectoral coalitions to highlight to elected officials the major environmental, human rights, and labour concerns with the Transpacific Partnership (TPP), TTIP, and other free trade agreements

·         Over 3 million people across Europe have already called on the EU and US governments to stop negotiating TTIP https://stop-ttip.org/

Arrests and Creative Nonviolent Actions at Atlanta's TPP Negotiations

As the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade talks unfold in Atlanta in an effort to finalize the pro-corporate deal, the quickly formed Atlanta #StopTPP Coalition, which includes American Friends Service Committee has come together to organize a number of rolling nonviolent actions to make it clear that the anti-democratic trade deal is not in the best interest of regular everyday people around the globe. The citizens in Atlanta and the global community have continued to nonviolently resist the agreement. We won’t stand for a wholesale auction of our rights, our freedoms and our democracy to multinational corporations who put profits over people.

Community members and concerned citizens from labor, faith, youth, senior, environment, LGBT, and others are coming together and inviting all within our United States and the global community to draw a line in the sand in Atlanta and to demand that the TPP shall not pass!

The Atlanta and global community will not stand for the TPP corrupting our democracy and eliminating our rights by putting corporations such as Walmart, Chevron, Cargill, and McDonalds in greater control of our daily lives leading us into a global race to the bottom. The undemocratic and secretive TPP would threaten good jobs, public services, access to affordable life-saving medicines, the environment and our climate, consumer health and safety and much more in our communities across the world.

Yesterday, during the TPP negotiations, cancer patient Zahara Heckscher was arrested after disrupting the negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in a protest aimed at maintaining access to affordable cancer medicines in the 12 countries affected by the trade treaty.

Heckscher, in a t-shirt reading "I HAVE CANCER. I CAN'T WAIT 8 YEARS", and holding an IV pole that read "TPP: Don' t Cut My IV,” refused to leave the Westin Hotel, the site of the negotiations between U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman and the other TPP trade ministers. She demanded that they show her the secret TPP text to verify for herself and other people living with cancer around the globe that TPP would not include a "death sentence clause," the text of the U.S. proposal to extend de facto monopolies on biological medicines by up to 8 years.

Heckscher, a seven-year breast cancer survivor, calls herself a cancer thriver. She has been treated by biologicals including trastuzumab (Hercepin) and pertuzumab (Perjeta). She is currently undergoing chemotherapy as part of a clinical trial, and continues on denosumab (Xgeva) treatment as well.

According to Heckscher, "For thousands of women to die unnecessarily of breast cancer because of the TPP is a horrible, cruel, premeditated, and avoidable catastrophe. The provisions being decided by TPP ministers today could allow drug monopolies on biologics for 8 years. Some of these medicines cost up to tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of dollars a year."

"When you have breast cancer today, you can’t wait 8 years or 7 years or 6 years for a treatment to become available or affordable. When you have cancer, even a one-year delay in affordable medicine can be a death sentence. That is why we call this proposed provision of the TPP a 'death sentence clause.' If it passes, thousands of women like me will die waiting."

As the day progressed there were dozens of creative actions including a disruption of a TPP reception hosted by the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce and the use of high powered projection devices to project images on the hotel negotiations are taking place in.

Today community members disrupted the lobby chanting, "Stop TPP, no corporate greed" as longtime human rights activist Daniel Hanely attached himself to a railing on the floor that negotiations were happening. Daniel was eventually arrested and is still incarcerated. Daniel made sure that these trade negotiators got the message that the people across the world absolutely will not stand for these corporate dominated trade deals. Daniel took a big risk today, and his bail is likely to be high, please consider contributing and sharing his to his bail fund by clicking here.

Today at 5pm hundreds of Atlantans will gather at Woodruff Park and march to the Westin where the negotiations are happening. Can we count on you to join?