The Third Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) was held in Seattle from November 30 to December 3, 1999. Trade ministers and other officials from the WTO's 135 member nations met in an unsuccessful attempt to plan negotiations to further deregulate free trade. Tens of thousands of activists for many causes gathered to protest what they saw as the WTO's favoring of corporate interests over social and environmental concerns.

On November 29, members of the WTO held a special session, titled "Seattle Symposium on International Trade Issues in the First Decades of the Next Century," to listen to opponents' complaints. Here, left to right, European Commissioner for Trade Pascal Lamy; Mike Moore, WTO director-general; and Alec Erwin, South African Minister of Trade and Industry, listen to their critics.

Caption information source: "An 'institution that people love to hate' lets them sound off", by James Wallace, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, November 30, 1999, page 18.