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Community Organizations World Trade Organization
World Trade Organization
World Trade Organization
Acronym
WTO
Intergovernmental or Multilateral organization
Website
Phone number
+41 (0)22 739 51 11

Location

Rue de Lausanne, 154
Case postale
1211
Geneva
Geneva
Switzerland
Working languages
inglés
español
francés

There are a number of ways of looking at the World Trade Organization. It is an organization for trade opening. It is a forum for governments to negotiate trade agreements. It is a place for them to settle trade disputes. It operates a system of trade rules. Essentially, the WTO is a place where member governments try to sort out the trade problems they face with each other.


The WTO was born out of negotiations, and everything the WTO does is the result of negotiations. The bulk of the WTO’s current work comes from the 1986–94 negotiations called the Uruguay Round and earlier negotiations under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The WTO is currently the host to new negotiations, under the ‘Doha Development Agenda’ launched in 2001.


Where countries have faced trade barriers and wanted them lowered, the negotiations have helped to open markets for trade. But the WTO is not just about opening markets, and in some circumstances its rules support maintaining trade barriers — for example, to protect consumers or prevent the spread of disease.


At its heart are the WTO agreements, negotiated and signed by the bulk of the world’s trading nations. These documents provide the legal ground rules for international commerce. They are essentially contracts, binding governments to keep their trade policies within agreed limits. Although negotiated and signed by governments, the goal is to help producers of goods and services, exporters, and importers conduct their business, while allowing governments to meet social and environmental objectives.


The system’s overriding purpose is to help trade flow as freely as possible — so long as there are no undesirable side effects — because this is important for economic development and well-being. That partly means removing obstacles. It also means ensuring that individuals, companies and governments know what the trade rules are around the world, and giving them the confidence that there will be no sudden changes of policy. In other words, the rules have to be ‘transparent’ and predictable.


Trade relations often involve conflicting interests. Agreements, including those painstakingly negotiated in the WTO system, often need interpreting. The most harmonious way to settle these differences is through some neutral procedure based on an agreed legal foundation. That is the purpose behind the dispute settlement process written into the WTO agreements.


    Members:

    Resources

    Displaying 1 - 2 of 2

    Sustainable Agricultural Productivity Growth and Bridging the Gap for Small-Family Farms

    Reports & Research
    Policy Papers & Briefs
    Junio, 2012

    Global agriculture will face multiple challenges over the coming decades. It must produce more food to feed an increasingly affluent and growing world population that will demand a more diverse diet, contribute to overall development and poverty alleviation in many developing countries, confront increased competition for alternative uses of finite land and water resources, adapt to climate change, and contribute to preserving biodiversity and restoring fragile ecosystems.

    WTO African group : joint proposal on the negotiations on agriculture

    Reports & Research
    Junio, 2001
    Africa

    The importance of agriculture in the economies of African countries cannot be overstated. Notwithstanding geographic and climatic diversity and other country specificities, the agricultural sector in African countries is the main source of rural livelihoods and, in general, employs more than two-thirds of the labour force. Agriculture generates more than a third of GDP in most African countries, and accounts for up to 40 per cent of exports. Most African countries have undertaken autonomous liberalization in agriculture.