After five days of demonstrations in Geneva against trade liberalization and deregulation policies imposed by the World Trade Organization (WTO), the activists set out for Copenhagen, to make their demands visible in that city as well.

The journey will be carried out in two buses and will travel through different routes. One of the buses will enter France, and the other one will get to Denmark through Germany.

Both vehicles will stop in several cities of these countries so that the activists can mobilize and explain the local population the reasons behind their trip to Copenhagen. They are expected to arrive to the Danish city on December 9th.

In Geneva, social movements and organizations have stated that the WTO´s policies, which leave way for transnational corporations to operate destructively in non-industrialized countries, are to blame for the financial, food and climate crises.

The international trade system proposed by the WTO allows big companies to dominate the food market, importing and exporting agricultural products non-stop, with its subsequent GHG emissions. Transportation accounts for over 20 per cent of the global emissions of greenhouse gases, the cause of global warming, per year. Also, peasant food production is destroyed.

The agriculture itself that the WTO promotes, an industrialized agriculture controlled by transnational corporations and highly dependant on agrotoxics, accounts for over 18 per cent of the GHG emissions per year. This is one of the reasons why the peasants gathered in La Via Campesina demand the WTO to stay out of agriculture.

With these demands and many others, the activists are on their way to the COP 15 on Climate Change to be held in Copenhagen, after five days of demonstrations in Geneva telling the WTO not to think about solutions for the crises, since their policies are the cause.

Photo: Radio Mundo Real