Daily update from Jo Leadbeater, European Health NGOs representative in Cancun.
Negotiations got underway today (10 September) at the WTO ministerial in Cancun, with agriculture continuing to dominate the official discussions and the buzz in the hallways.
The proposal by four West African countries (Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali and Chad) to eliminate US cotton subsidies continues to receive a lot of attention.
Cotton was discussed in the plenary with many developing countries expressing support for the West Africans.
The US however gave a blustering response, mentioning a series of reasons why West African cotton would be in crisis with or without subsidies.
The European Union failed to express strong backing for the West African case.
Thousands of Mexican campesinos hit the road around this peninsula protesting the effects of WTO policies on small farmers.
A team of Oxfam staff with partners from West Africa and China took part in the demo.
A largely peaceful protest was marred by some violence by a small group of protestors.
Sadly a life was lost when a Korean farmer took his own life as an act of protest.
Oxfam has expressed its regrets to the march organizers La Via Campesina.
Back in the convention center, the EU was angered by Oxfam circulating a leaked EU negotiating document which revealed the extent to which Brussels is trying to erase from the formal text any commitment to the elimination of export subsidies - an explicit promise at the heart of the agreement made at Doha when the round was launched two years ago.
