Trading Futures
How will today’s international agreements affect the security of tomorrow?
Written by KAREN MacEACHERN
Originally published in VIEW magazine. Spring 2007
In India, 17,000 farmers killed themselves in 2003, according to the New York Times. For Windsor alumna and law professor Sukanya Pillay, this is a harrowing statistic.
What is the root of this tragedy? We need to understand how international trade agendas and government actions are colluding to destroy infrastructures and drive vulnerable groups like farmers to despair,” she says.
Pillay says farmers in countries like India and even Canada, have been overly dependant on government subsidies and competitive bank loans to produce crops. “Subsidies and reduced interest loans to farmers can be a good thing: they insure that subsistence farmers are self sufficient; biodiversity and agrarian cultural traditions persist; and that the nation’s food security and food production capacity are protected,” Pillay says. This is necessary for a country to avoid becoming too dependant on foreign imports of food.
While some of this may sound anti-competitive, Pillay argues that even trade agreements can contribute to unfair trade. “The current international trade rules allow the U.S., EU and Japan to pay more than US$360 billion in subsidies to their farmers. This means their farmers – often large corporate farms – produce highly subsidized food, which is exported to developing countries, where they sell more cheaply than the local foods.”
But Pillay argues that the hidden costs are high. “These imports are cheaper only because they are subsidized,” she says. “U.S. corn sells more cheaply in Mexico than Mexican corn, but that is because the U.S. production costs are subsidized. There are other hidden costs though – what about the hidden costs of dismantling Mexico’s corn production capacity and making it dependant on imports of one of it’s staple crops? Or costs to American tax payers when it’s government allocates up to U.S. $19 billion per year on agricultural subsidies when that money might be better spent elsewhere? What about threats to international biodiversity?”
Pillay Cites the United Nations and World Food and Agricultural Organization reports that world hunger and malnutrition are growing exponentially.
It’s a story that often isn’t told say’s Pillay. “Mainstream news stories in India today focus on it’s rising GDP and growing middle class. This overlooks the fact that in a population of one billion people, only 20 percent enjoy the benefits of an economy that is growing only in certain sectors (information technology).” Pillay adds: “Whats worse, 700 million people who depend on agriculture are being pushed further and further into poverty. Hunger and malnutrition are worse for children than anywhere in the world.
The rising inequity between have and have nots will destabilize India, and could threaten peace and security.”
Speaking up for the marginalized motivates Pillay. “In so many situations worldwide, vulnerable groups are further threatened when their human rights are not protected. Governments must fulfill their international legal obligations to protect the rights of every human being”, she says. Pillay first learned how the law can be used to protect human rights victims when she was in law school at Windsor and worked with refugees fleeing persecution.
Her commitment to international law and human rights has been a constant for her career. For several years she ran the Witness program at the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (now Human Rights First) in New York, and as Director of the Human Rights Program in London. She worked constantly in conflict zones, assisting local human rights lawyers, gathering visual evidence of human rights abuses, and using this evidence to hold perpetrators accountable in court and to advocate changes through peace agreements and new laws. Pillay also used her footage to create documentaries to raise awareness of victims. She had many close calls working, for example, in Cote D’Ivoire, on the Sudanese-Eritrean border, in Haiti investigating coup era crimes, and in Northern Ireland.
In 2000 Pillay moved back to the private sector, working for a large multinational operating in India and headquartered in Hong Kong. “It was a tremendous opportunity for me to see firsthand the pros and cons of foreign investment in a developing country, which happens to be where my parents grew up and where my extended family still lives,” she says of India. “Once again I witnessed the intricacies connecting trade and human rights, foreign investment laws, and the effects upon local populations in cities and the countryside.”
Wanting to research in this area and work with students, Pillay took up her position at the Faculty of Law at the University of Windsor in 2003. “As legal academics, we have a tremendous opportunity to speak up about issues that warrant attention, to influence policy, and to work with our students to create the society and world we want to live in,” she says.
Since her return, with the help of the law faculty and Dean Bruce Elman, Pillay produced a documentary, Robbing Pedro to Pay Paul, which was broadcast internationally on BBC World, and highlighted the effects of NAFTA and U.S. corn subsidies on Mexican farmers. Her writings on corporate social responsibility, privacy, development and human rights have appeared in the Stanford Technology Law Review, American Business Law Journal, Michigan State University Journal of International Law, and the Manitoba Law Review.
WIRES AND POLES FROM RIVERSIDE DRIVE TO THE 401. 
