World Trade Organization

Origins

The WTO was created on January 1, 1995 to replace the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), a series of post-war trade treaties intended to facilitate free trade. The GATT principles and agreements were adopted by the WTO, which was charged with administering and extending them. Unlike the GATT, the WTO has an institutional structure.

The WTO is effectively the long-delayed successor to the anticipated International Trade Organization, which was originally intended to follow the GATT.

The WTO has two basic functions: as a negotiating forum for discussions of new and existing trade rules, and as a trade dispute settlement body.

Negotiations

Where most international organisations operate on a one country, one vote or even a weighted voting basis, many WTO decisions, such as adopting agreements (and revisions to them) are determined by consensus.

This does not necessarily mean that unanimity is found: only that no Member finds a decision so unacceptable that they must insist on their objection. Voting is only employed as a fall-back mechanism or in special cases.

The advantage of consensus is that it encourages efforts to find the most widely acceptable decision.

The main disadvantages include large time requirements and many rounds of negotiation to develop a consensus decision, and the tendency for final agreements to use ambiguous language on contentious points that makes future interpretation of treaties difficult. 

The WTO began the current round of negotiations, the Doha round, at the Fourth Ministerial Conference in Doha, Qatar in November 2001. The talks have been highly contentious and agreement has not yet been reached (Oct 2005).

Dispute resolution

Like most other international organizations, the WTO has no significant power to enforce the decisions it makes when a member brings a complaint against another. If decisions are not complied with, it may authorise "retaliatory measures" on the part of the complaining member, but no other enforcement action is available.

Membership

The WTO had 76 members at its creation. A further 72 members joined over the following ten years, the latest (as of 16 February 2005) being Cambodia on 13 October 2004. A current list of members can be found here.

Chronology

• 1986-1994 - Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations culminating in the Marrakech Agreement that established the WTO.
• January 1, 1995 - The WTO came into existence.
• May 1, 1995 - Renato Ruggiero becomes director-general for a 4-year term.
• December 1996 - The inaugural ministerial conference in Singapore. Disagreements between largely developed and developing economies emerged during this conference over four issues initiated by this conference, which led to them being collectively referred to as the Singapore issues.
• May 1998 - 2nd ministerial conference in Geneva, Switzerland.
• September 1, 1999 - Mike Moore became director-general. The post had been fiercely contested; eventually a compromise was reached with Mike Moore and Supachai Panitchpakdi taking half each of a six-year term.
• November 1999 - 3rd ministerial conference in Seattle, Washington, USA. The conference itself ended in failure, with massive demonstrations and riots drawing worldwide attention.
• November, 2001 - 4th ministerial conference in Doha, Qatar begins the Doha round. Issuance of the Doha Declaration.
• December 11, 2001 - The People's Republic of China joined the WTO after 15 years of negotiations (the longest in GATT history).
• September 1, 2002 - Supachai Panitchpakdi became director-general.
• September 2003 - 5th ministerial conference in Cancún, Mexico aims at forging agreement on the Doha round. An alliance of 22 southern states, the G20 (led by India, China and Brazil), resisted demands from the North for agreements on the so-called Singapore issues and called for an end to agricultural subsidies within the EU and the US. The talks broke down without progress.
• August 2004 - Geneva talks achieve a framework agreement on the Doha round. Developed countries will lower agricultural subsidies, and in exchange the developing countries will lower tariff barriers to manufactured goods.
• May 2005 - Paris talks aimed at finalising issues for agreement before the December 2005 ministerial conference in Hong Kong are hung over technical issues. The group of five (U.S., Australia, the EU, Brazil and India) fail to agree over chicken, beef and rice. France continues to protest restrictions on subsidies to farmers. Oxfam accuses the EU of delaying tactics which threaten to scupper the Doha round.
• December 13 - December 18, 2005 - 6th ministerial conference will be held in Hong Kong.

Extracted from Wikipedia Oct 2005