Under the Trade Related Intellectual Property agreement of the World Trade Organization, countries have to implement patent laws granting exclusive, monopolistic rights to the pharmaceutical and biotech industry. This prevents countries from producing low cost generic drugs. Patents are, therefore, literally robbing AIDS victims of their lives. However, in the world order of globalization dictated by commerce, greed and profits, it is providing cures through affordable medicine that is illegal. At the World Court of Women, we declare that laws that force a government to deny citizens the right to food and the right to medicine are genocidal.
Globalization is a violent system, imposed and maintained through use of violence.
As trade is elevated above human needs, the insatiable appetite of global markets for resources is met by unleashing new wars over resources. The war over diamonds in Sierra Leonne, over oil in Nigeria has killed thousands of women and children. The transfer of people's resources to global corporations also makes states more militaristic as they arm themselves on behalf of commercial interests, and start wars against their own people. Violence has been used by the government against tribal people in areas where Bauxite is mined in Orissa and in Koel Karo, where the building of a large dam was stopped. But it is not just non-renewable resources like diamonds, oil and minerals which global corporations want to own.