"Members themselves must want to achieve progress. Members themselves must want to negotiate. And members themselves need to be in the driving seat on the road to MC12," said the chair, Ambassador Gloria Abraham Peralta of Costa Rica.

In her opening remarks, the chair reminded members that, by improving the functioning of food and agricultural markets, an outcome at the upcoming ministerial conference could make a meaningful contribution to recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic – and also help address other challenges members face, such as food insecurity and poverty. “We all have a role to play,” she said.

With limited time left before the conference, her draft text seeks to help negotiators shift gears and start to engage in focused, text-based negotiations. It outlines the possible contours of ministerial decisions on seven agriculture negotiating topics: domestic support, market access, export restrictions, export competition (covering measures seen as...

Technical assistance activities aim to help developing countries take full advantage of the multilateral trading system. Within the WTO Secretariat, these activities are coordinated by the Institute for Training and Technical Cooperation (ITTC), based on technical assistance and training plans. The Committee on Trade and Development regularly oversees all Trade-Related Technical Assistance activities.

The WTO's technical assistance and training plans contain detailed information on all of the WTO Secretariat's Technical Assistance “products” as well as on individual activities. The WTO responds to specific national and regional needs in line with its Progressive Learning Strategy, which provides graduated levels of training to course participants. A results-based management approach is used to monitor and evaluate these activities and to further develop the assistance provided.

The changing needs of WTO members continue to determine the type of assistance...

Surveillance of national trade policies is a fundamentally important activity running throughout the work of the WTO. At the centre of this work is the Trade Policy Review Mechanism (TPRM). All WTO members are reviewed, the frequency of each country’s review varying according to its share of world trade.

The Public Forum is the WTO’s largest annual outreach event. It provides a unique platform for heads of states, parliamentarians, leading global business people, students, academics and non-governmental organizations to come together and debate a wide range of WTO issues and to discuss some of the major trade and development topics of the day. Over 1,500 participants attend the Forum each year.

Should you have further questions, please contact the Public Forum Team at: pf21@wto.org

Open global trade has had positive effects for African industrialization and development. This report looks at efforts to help African countries strengthen their trading capacity and take fuller advantage of the benefits that trade brings.

The TBT Agreement entered into force with the establishment of the WTO on 1 January 1995. It aims to ensure that product requirements in regulations and standards — on safety, quality, health, etc. — as well as procedures for assessing product compliance with such requirements (testing, inspection, accreditation, etc.) are not unjustifiably discriminatory and do not create unnecessary obstacles to trade. The Agreement also emphasizes the importance of transparency and strongly encourages the use of international standards as a basis for harmonizing regulations across WTO members.

The handbook sets out the key principles of the TBT Agreement and discusses how these have been addressed in recent disputes brought under this Agreement. The publication looks into requirements on transparency, a cornerstone of the TBT Agreement, and describes the mandate, role and work of the TBT Committee. It also considers how TBT?related matters have been tackled in negotiations at...

The SPS Agreement aims to ensure that WTO members’ health protection measures in the areas of food safety, animal and plant health do not restrict international trade more than necessary. The WTO Committee on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures oversees the implementation of the SPS Agreement and is the forum where members discuss specific trade concerns (STCs).

The publication focuses on members’ compliance with notification requirements under the SPS Agreement and the trade concerns raised in the SPS Committee, often in response to these notifications.

Key results highlighted in the booklet:

MC12 will take place in Geneva, Switzerland, from 30 November to 3 December 2021. A detailed explanation of the accreditation procedure is available here.

Online registration is available at https://eregistration.wto.org/mc12/ngo/register/en. Individual online registration will only be available for those NGOs that have been accredited. Individuals should register no later than 29 October 2021 (midnight, GMT).

For more information, please contact us by email at: mc12-ngo@wto.org.

More information on the Ministerial Conference is available here.

Aid for Trade helps developing countries, and particularly least developed countries, trade. Many developing countries face a range of supply-side and trade-related infrastructure obstacles which constrains their ability to engage in international trade.

The WTO-led Aid-for-Trade Initiative encourages developing country governments and donors to recognize the role that trade can play in development. In particular, the initiative seeks to mobilize resources to address the trade-related constraints identified by developing and least-developed countries.

The International Monetary Fund, World Bank Group, World Health Organization and World Trade Organization have joined forces to accelerate access to COVID-19 vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics by leveraging multilateral finance and trade solutions, particularly in low- and middle-income countries.

The aim is to vaccinate at least 40 percent of people in every country by the end of 2021, and at least 60 percent by mid-2022.  The effort will track, coordinate, and advance delivery of COVID-19 vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics, working with governments and partners at the global and local levels to address finance and trade barriers to ensure that vulnerable populations have access to these life-saving tools. It supports the goals of the ACT-Accelerator and complementary initiatives.

The Multilateral Leaders Task Force members are mobilizing critical financing, with a focus on grants and concessional lending; helping to...

The training activity for English-speaking Africa was the third eRTPC that the WTO has delivered since the COVID-19 pandemic struck last year, and the first one for Africa. The government officials were from Botswana, Egypt, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, The Gambia, Uganda and Zambia.

Organized by the WTO's Institute for Training and Technical Cooperation (ITTC), in partnership with the University of Mauritius, the course sought to ensure that trade-related technical assistance continued to be available despite the COVID-19 pandemic.

In her keynote video address delivered at the closing ceremony of this course, the Director of the WTO's Institute for Training and Technical Cooperation (ITTC), Ms Bridget Chilala, highlighted that the course had taken place at a critical moment for global trade, which was severely impacted by the COVID?19 pandemic. WTO members are grappling with how to...

The WTO Secretariat has circulated a meeting notice and list of items proposed for the next meeting, on 30 August 2021, of the Dispute Settlement Body, which consists of all WTO members and oversees legal disputes among them. The meeting notice is circulated in the form of a document officially called an “airgram”.