About the WTO

The TRIPS Agreement includes a set of transparency mechanisms, which require members to furnish extensive information about their IP laws and policies, and details about how IPRs are administered and enforced in their territories; these laws are also reviewed in detail in the TRIPS Council. In addition, the TRIPS Council has itself established a series of reporting processes concerning specific aspects of members’ IP systems. The operation of these transparency mechanisms in the years since 1995 has yielded a uniquely comprehensive and systematic body of information that now covers some 130 jurisdictions (essentially all WTO members other than LDC members, for whom these provisions do not yet apply).

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.

Agriculture is still one of the most important sectors in Africa’s trade policy. Besides other raw materials, agriculture commodities continue to be a major source of income for African countries.

The World Trade Organization came into being in 1995, as the successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which had been established (1947) in the wake of the Second World War. The WTO’s main objective is the establishment of rules for Members’ trade policy which help international trade to expand with a view to raising living standards. These rules foster non-discrimination, transparency and predictability in the conduct of trade policy.

En 2011, la OMC siguió manteniendo contactos regulares con los periodistas en Ginebra y en el resto del mundo, y organizó 39 reuniones de información en Ginebra. Organizó también varias actividades de formación para periodistas y utilizó en mayor medida las redes sociales para transmitir noticias y anunciar actos. Durante 2011, el sitio Web de la OMC se modernizó para ofrecer una idea más clara de la labor de la Organización y facilitar a los visitantes el acceso a la información. La OMC también amplió su programa de publicaciones, en particular las publicaciones conjuntas con otras organizaciones internacionales.

During the first ten years of its existence, the global legitimacy of the World Trade Organization (WTO) has frequently been called into question by ‘civil society’, and particularly by non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Everyone recalls, for example, the events during the conference in Seattle. One of the main criticisms is that the WTO’s decisions, and especially those taken within a dispute settlement context, are arrived at ‘behind closed doors’ and take into account only the trade-offs between state interests with no consideration for the rights and interests of private individuals. To make up for these shortcomings, NGOs and various private bodies, including those that represent multinational corporations, have been demanding, among other things, the right to join WTO dispute settlement proceedings, as ‘friends of the court’ and, in that capacity, submit amicus curiae briefs.

If the trading system of the twenty-first century is to succeed in ‘raising standards of living, ensuring full employment and a large and steadily growing volume of real income and effective demand, and expanding the production and trade in goods and services . . . in accordance with the objective of sustainable development’, it must be equipped to achieve these goals.

En 2016, aumentó significativamente la colaboración con la comunidad empresarial. En mayo, la OMC acogió una reunión de dirigentes empresariales, a petición de la Cámara de Comercio Internacional (CCI) y del B-20, la rama empresarial del G-20. El evento se celebró en el marco de la iniciativa “Diálogos sobre el Comercio”, que tiene por objeto dar a las distintas partes interesadas, en particular la comunidad empresarial, la oportunidad de debatir sobre cuestiones comerciales. Se realizó una actividad de seguimiento en el Foro Público de la OMC, a la que asistieron numerosos representantes del sector privado.