Anti-globalization Movement - Criticisms - Lack of Widespread "Third World" Support

Lack of Widespread "Third World" Support

Critics have asserted that people from poor countries (the Third World) have been relatively accepting and supportive of globalization while the strongest opposition to globalization has come from wealthy "First World" activists, unions and NGOs. Alan Shipman, author of "The Globalization Myth" accuses the anti-globalization movement of "defusing the Western class war by shifting alienation and exploitation to developing-country sweatshops." He later goes on to claim that the anti-globalization movement has failed to attract widespread support from poor and working people from the Third World, and that its "strongest and most uncomprehending critics had always been the workers whose liberation from employment they were trying to secure."

These critics assert that people from the Third World see the anti-globalization movement as a threat to their jobs, wages, consuming options and livelihoods, and that a cessation or reversal of globalization would result in many people in poor countries being left in greater poverty. Jesús F. Reyes Heroles the former Mexican Ambassador to the US, stated that "In a poor country like ours, the alternative to low-paid jobs isn't well-paid ones, it's no jobs at all."

Egypt's Ambassador to the UN has also stated "The question is why all of a sudden, when third world labour has proved to be competitive, why do industrial countries start feeling concerned about our workers? When all of a sudden there is a concern about the welfare of our workers, it is suspicious."

On the other hand, there have been notable protests against certain globalization policies by Third World workers as in the cause of Indian farmers protesting against patenting seeds.

In last few years, many Third World countries (esp. Latin America and Caribbean) created alter-globalization organizations as economic blocs Mercosur and Unasur, political community CELAC or Bank of the South which supporting development of Third World countries without restrictions like IMF or World Bank.