Against GATS : the Sense of a Global Struggle

Since the World Trade Organisation (WTO) was constituted in 1995, there has been a constantly increasing number of protests in reaction to the organisation and its numerous agreements. One of the issues that is most condemned by a variety of bodies (social movements, local governments, public universities, etc.) is the inclusion of education in the WTO's General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). The GATS stipulates the application of regulations for free trade in the education sector - and all others - and aims to promote the commercialisation of educational services through successive rounds of negotiations. These negotiations take place on an international scale, which means that as we shall see, many of the struggles against them are of a similarly global nature. However, an important set of initiatives for resistance is being developed on a local and state level. In this article, we shall be looking into the causes and motives for these reactions against the GATS (which can be interpreted as the actual Agreement and its main effects), the main bodies that have risen up against the GATS and the commercialisation of public assets that it involves, and the initiatives for resistance that have taken place. Finally, we will analyse the impact of these initiatives on the process of negotiating the Agreement and the functioning of the WTO itself