Next week, trade ministers from 30 countries selected by WTO Director Pascal Lamy will convene a mini-ministerial in Geneva, Switzerland in a last ditch attempt to move the Doha Round of negotiations forward.
The latest issue of IATP's Geneva Update points out the absurdity of a negotiating process that excludes 120 member countries. But also writes about how far the Doha Round has strayed from its original intentions in 2001 to improve economic development and alleviate poverty - with the interests of developing countries at the heart of reform. IATP's Carin Smaller and Anne-Laure Constantin write, "The latest negotiating texts on agriculture and manufactured goods are a complicated mess, reflecting a narrow set of commercial interests rather than a vision for how to reform the WTO."
In fact, several studies have shown that the Doha Round offers very little if anything for the developing countries it was supposed to help. IATP's recent analysis of the proposed WTO agriculture text and the U.S. Farm Bill found that both essentially allow the status quo to continue. So, why continue pushing negotiations forward?
The WTO has lost its way. It operates in a strange vaccum absent the series of crises in food, energy and financal markets that the rest of world faces and urgently needs to address.
As Smaller and Constantin write, "The compromises required to reach agreement on the Doha Agenda have effectively killed the Agenda itself. It has been clear for several years that the development angles were gone: the commercial imperatives trumped any interest in rectifying important mistakes made under the Uruguay Round, or in developing better rules from the perspective of developing countries, particularly the perspectives of least developed countries. Now the agenda is a mess from any perspective, including that of free traders."
IATP's Trade Information Project in Geneva will be following the negotiations all next week - stay tuned.
