It also provides a template for teaching and research activities to scholars focusing on international trade law, development studies and international dispute settlement. The challenges and experiences faced by developing countries in the existing WTO legal system examined. However, despite the positive assessment of the WTO dispute settlement system, the functioning of the system is working against the interest of developing countries in having an efficient dispute settlement system that considers their needs and deals fairly with their disputes.
This book provides a much understanding of how the WTO dispute Settlement System actually operates behind the scenes for developing Countries.
The WTO regulates the global rules for trade, and—unique among international organizations—it provides a legalized process for litigation between countries over trade grievances. Joseph Conti looks closely at who uses the system to initiate and pursue disputes, who settles and on what terms, and the relative disconnect between pursuing a dispute and what a country gains through efforts to gain compliance with WTO dictates.
Through this inside look at the process of disputing, Conti provides fresh perspective on how and why the law authorizes the use of specific resources and tactics in the ever unfolding struggle for control in the global economy. In order to ensure the equitable participation of these countries in the benefits of the global trading system, the GATT Uruguay Round Agreements that created the WTO accorded special and differential treatment to developing countries.
This Guide covers these provisions of the WTO Agreements, with detailed information on how developing countries can benefit from special rules governing such areas as: access to developed country markets in all major commodities and services, the dispute settlement process, trade policy review, foreign direct investment, environmental and labour standards, and technical assistance.
The Guide also offers the reader case studies on how some developing country members of the WTO Uganda, India, and Candocirc;te d'Ivoire are making progress in working with the obligations and the benefits provided to them by the WTO Agreements. This text explains the new Work Programme guiding these negotiations. Far from constituting a "development agenda" as the rich countries have claimed, the author shows that issues of great importance to developing countries like textiles and balance of payments do not even figure.
Instead, the Work Programme gives special attention to those areas which are of interest to the major developed countries, thereby further increasing the imbalance in the WTO system between North and South. He examines each issue likely to figure in the new negotiations, including agriculture, services, subsidies, anti-dumping, regional trade arrangements, dispute settlement, industrial tariffs, intellectual property rights, investment, competition policy, transparency in government procurement, trade facilitation and electronic commerce.
He makes practical policy proposals for the revision of the existing WTO Agreements to protect and improve the development prospects of the poor and disadvantaged countries.
African countries need to engage more in this emerging system to defend their trade and economic interests, especially in this time of increasing integration in the world trading system. It is submitted that the weak participation of African countries in the DSU can have negative economic and trade implications on Africa, as it minimises the influence these countries could exert on the development of the DSU legal system at this stage of particular importance to the evolution of international trade law in addition to its direct economic and trade costs.
All complaints about impediments in the DSU cannot be rightly claimed to be the core reasons for weak African participation in the system, as the system still stand out as a rule-based with equal treatment to Developed and Developing countries.
Additionally, the low participation of African countries cannot be justified by the degree of development basis only, as other developing counties have been very successful in this regard and some African countries managed to make use of the system in a very positive way.
Moreover, this dissertation states that the effect of other internal constraints that are reported to hinder African participation, such as lack of sufficient financial resources, limited technical expertise and political factors, could be minimised through joint African cooperation, and by developing national strategies to deal with DSU.
Egypt is a good example in this regard: despite its limited financial and technical expertise, it managed to gain accumulated experience through its various forms of engaging in the DSU, and consequently managed to defend its trade and economic interests. The establishment of a national organisational framework to deal with the DSU assisted in the preparation of national expertise that is gaining increasing experience.
African countries are called to work within the African Union and on the national levels to make the best use of the system to serve their developmental goals. Developing countries initiate disputes against developed country Members as well as against other developing country Members.
Least-developed country Members have so far been neither complainant nor respondent in any WTO dispute. Third party participation of developing country Members is quite frequent and provides a valuable experience for Members not regularly involved in dispute settlement proceedings.
On the other hand, it is true that in the majority of WTO disputes so far, the complainant has been a developed country Member, and the same is true as far as respondents are concerned. Taking account of the fact that the majority of WTO Members are developing countries, one could conclude that the developed countries make a disproportionate use of the dispute settlement system. Jumping to this conclusion, however, would disregard the fact that these Members, who are complainants and respondents in a majority of WTO disputes, account for most of world-wide trade.
They often have trade relationships that are very broad in all sectors of goods and services and deep in terms of the volume of trade in quantity or value. Such trade relationships significantly increase the probability of frictions arising as a result of trade barriers, which the exporting Member may be willing to challenge in dispute settlement.
This, in turn, reveals a problematic reality from the perspective of developing country Members. The moderate trade volume affected by a possibly WTO-incompatible trade barrier maintained by another Member might not always justify the considerable investment of time and money necessary for a WTO dispute.
There is thus no question that developing country Members are in a special situation which, to some extent, the current dispute settlement system also addresses. There is also no question that the ability of developing country Members to make effective use of the dispute settlement system is essential for them to be able to reap the full benefits they are entitled to under the WTO Agreement. The tools to address the particular situation of developing country Members are the rules of special and differential treatment 2 and legal assistance as elaborated in the following sections.
Chapters done:. Notes: 1. The second edition of this handbook published in can be found at here. You need scripting enabled to see which chapters you have completed Introduction to the WTO dispute settlement system.
Historic development of the WTO dispute settlement system. WTO Bodies involved in the dispute settlement process. Possible object of a complaint — Jurisdiction of Panels and the Appellate Body.
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