The WTO has instituted capital as a new subject of rights, formulated around commercial interests, a fact which places corporations at an equivalent or higher level than that of people - and States -, with the aggravating factor that the former have the power and the resources to make their interests prevail over any other consideration.

Rights such as health, education, food, access to vital resources, and others, whose progressive development opened the way for humanizing social relations, are now mere branches of the market. All social rights, whose application remits to States, are undergoing a change of approach. A simple look at the contents of the chapter on services demonstrates a shift from the vision of social co-responsibility towards a view-point governed by trade rules.

The same thing is happening to the management of natural resources such as water and land, that are being treated as mere commercial goods and no longer as vital elements that are part of the habitat, that therefore require careful policies of collective management.

Other rights, such labor or union rights, that were formulated precisely to protect people from exploitation, are perceived not just as impediments to trade, but even as violations of trade freedom.

The principles of equality, justice and freedom, on which - at least in principle - most modern nations were built, are now aspirations of capital that, as the new subject of rights, is claiming its right to exercise them. Freedom has never been brought up as often as in the WTO, referring, of course, to commercial -not human- freedom; and under the same impetus, allusions to justice are ever more frequent, because the new subject of rights feels tied by the yoke of oppressive constitutions and national and international legislation, that puts the rights of people before theirs.

The equality principle is also frequently evoked, mainly in reference to issues of investment and competition, because when it comes to investing, all capital should be treated with parity, with no hateful distinctions between national, neighboring country or foreign origin. There are vigourous endeavours in the WTO to eradicate the "inequalities" that give advantages to humans, which explains the eagerness to accelerate the application of the Trade Development Fund, one of whose main objectives is "to help" to modify Constitutions and legislation, as soon as possible, so as to make them even more friendly to capital rights.

Not long ago, it was astonishing to think that any corporation might be able prosecute anyone - whether a country, a group or a person - who obstructed their potential profits or expansion, independently of whatever human or ecological reasons motivated this impediment. Now it is increasingly clear that the integrality and indivisibility of human rights are themselves being seen as a universal competitive disadvantage, which could imply that their enforcement could also come to be considered as an impediment to investment, to trade freedom and to the rights of capital.

With the aim of celebrating an apolitical commitment, the WTO always evaded interrelating its normative frame with the binding principle of other international instruments, especially those relating to rights, the environment and sovereignty, thus preserving a margin of impunity for violations of economic, social and cultural rights, and even civil ones.

In a panel on "The Social Responsibility of Corporations", held within the framework of the 6th Ministerial Meeting of the WTO in Hong Kong, companies associated labor and environmental responsibility and human rights with the good corporate image that greater competitiveness can convey. But governmental representatives, such as Iqbar Sharma, General Director of the Department of Commerce and Industries of South Africa, questioned them, asking why they fulfill this in their own countries and omit to do so outside their borders. Disturbingly, both sides envisioned the fulfillment of rights as optional.

In fact, corporations are governed by commercial law, the directives of the OECD on the matter and by their own frameworks or lines of conduct; but as none of these are binding, they are not enforceable in settings considered exogenous. Therefore, the priority given to corporate rights, without consideration of human rights, seriously endangers the enforcement of the latter. In this context, to add a social clause or one on human rights, in a framework that is considered independent of everything that exists on the matter, is pure rhetoric.

Thus, the differences between the postulates of free trade and human rights are deep-seated. By placing trade as a paradigm of the exercise of rights, the WTO overturns the philosophy of human rights, because it clearly places trade rights above those of humans.

Moreover, even if the impact of the WTO decisions, as it claims, were exclusively limited to trade, its impact is not restricted to this field, because its application has to do with a set of human relations that involve all aspects of people's lives.

In other words, it is not only the sovereignty of States which is at stake, it is also the rights and autonomy of people, both of which are part of human rights, because the so-called guidelines for free trade do not refer simply to the development of international norms on this matter. They refer rather to the design of a society-world model that has the interests of capital and its "sensitive" markets as its central axis, in an irreconcilable divorce from human rights.

(Translation: ALAI)