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PRESS
RELEASE – JULY 2008
CUTS, a champion of developing
countries’ interests, establishes a new NGO in Geneva
Geneva, July 16, 2008
 Valentine
S. Rugwabiza, Deputy Director General of the World Trade
Organisation, speaking on behalf of Pascal Lamy, the Director
General, called CUTS a champion of the development interests
of developing countries, and a champion of fair globalisation
that creates opportunities for the most marginalised amongst
developing countries. She was speaking at the launch of the
CUTS Geneva Resource Centre, opened on 16 July 2008 at Geneva
with the support of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
She stated that the inauguration of the CUTS Geneva Resource
Centre as a pro-trade, pro-consumer, and most importantly,
pro-development organisation is a truly good news for WTO and
the trade and development community of Geneva. WTO has
benefitted from the knowledge of the problems and limitations
of developing countries of CUTS, and she considered it a
daring step for Pradeep S Mehta, its Secretary General, to
establish presence in Geneva in these unpredictable times. She
was convinced that the new Centre was an urgently needed input
to the Geneva processes to move forward a still fragile
international trading system in particular in these days when
failure of the Doha Round was simply not an option.
Lakshmi Puri,
Acting Deputy Secretary General of UNCTAD, speaking on behalf
of Supachai Panitchpakdi, the Secretary General, added her
voice to the well wishers of CUTS, stating that UNCTAD has had
a long and fruitful relationship with CUTS, and most recently
in UNCTAD XII in Accra three months ago. Africa’s development
is a focus area for UNCTAD, and she was happy to see that CUTS
GRC was starting its Geneva operations with a project with its
focus on Africa. She was particularly appreciative of the work
undertaken by CUTS on building productive capacities of
developing countries as a pre-requisite for benefitting from
trade liberalisation. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has
called Africa as the epicentre of a development emergency, and
the Fostering Equity and Accountability in the Trading System
(FEATS) project of CUTS Geneva can help UNCTAD resolve to
change this state of affairs.
Friedrich von
Kirchbach, Director, Market Development, International Trade
Centre, representing Patricia Francis, the Executive Director,
congratulated CUTS for the Geneva Centre, and offered to work
together by creating synergies between many products of ITC
that had similar objectives as the FEATS project of CUTS. He
wished CUTS as much success in the next quarter century as it
had achieved in the last.
Speaking at the
start of the launch, Pradeep S. Mehta took the participants
through the difficult but revealing period since the inception
of CUTS in 1983 to its present role of an international,
credible southern organisation, and called the opening of the
Geneva Resource Centre a dream realised. In this iniquitous
world, having an understanding of issues at the grassroots
level, and working towards amelioration of the poorest of the
poor has been the motivation to expand to so many areas of
operations, spanning trade, economic development, consumer
action, competition, regulation and investment.
Philippe Brusick,
Chairman of the General Assembly of CUTS Geneva Resource
Centre felt happy to represent CUTS in Geneva after a very
long and productive association and explained the FEATS
project, which includes research, advocacy and networking on
trade and development issues in selected African countries.
<<More>>
For WTO Deputy
Director-General Valentine Rugwabiza's Speech
(Click here)
For further
information please contact:
Atul Kaushik, Director, CUTS Geneva Resource Centre,
ak@cuts.org; +41227346080;
www.cuts-international.org/GRC/index.htm
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