WTO Resource Centre Collection

 

World Trade Organization

• General Information
• GATT
• Legislation and Treaties
• Membership
• Ministerial Conferences
• News
• Online Publications
• Online Training
• Trade and Environment

 

General Information

The World Trade Organization (WTO), established on 1 January 1995, is the principal international body concerned with multilateral trading issues and trade-liberalizing agreements. It provides the principal contractual obligations determining how governments frame and implement domestic trade legislation and regulations. It is the platform on which trade relations among countries evolve through collective debate, negotiation and adjudication. WTO replaced GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), which started in 1948, and is the embodiment of the results of the 1986-1994 Uruguay Round of trade negotiations.

• Bibliography database
  The bibliography database offers access to a sample of studies by the WTO and from non-WTO sources on economic and legal aspects of the multilateral trading system.
• Bibliography of Articles on International Trade and WTO
  Compiled by Ruth C. Lawson, Professor of International Politics, Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts, USA.
• Cato Institute Center for Trade Policy Studies
  Briefing on the WTO. The Center's mission is to increase public understanding of the benefits of free trade and the costs of protectionism.
• Club Model of Multilateral Cooperation and Problems of Democratic Legitimacy by Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye (2000)
  This site provides access to a paper given at the 2000 annual conference of the American Political Science Association. It examines the 'club theory' of international organisations, focusing specifically on the example of the World Trade Organization (WTO).
• European Commission Directorate General for Trade market access database
  Provides access to information via a selection of databases.
• Hoover Institution essays in public policy
  Democratizing the World Trade Organization / Fiona McGillivray. This essay concerns which countries determine the course of policy proposals in the WTO and to what extent the winners or losers from free trade are championed by national trade negotiators.
• IATP Trade Observatory Document Library
• IISDnet Trade and Investment - The World Trade Organization
  Background information on the WTO from the International Institute for Sustainable Development.
• Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
  The mission of the Institute is to create environmentally and economically sustainable rural communities and regions through sound agriculture and trade policy. Supporting sustainable agriculture, reduced pesticide use, and related practices.
• Institute for International Economics
  Decision-making in the WTO / J.J. Schott & J. Watal.
  (International economics policy briefs ; no. 00-2)
• Institute for International Economics
  Fifty years of the GATT/WTO: Lessons from the Past for Strategies for the Future
  C. Fred Bergsten (Working Paper 98-3)
• New NGO position papers received by the WTO secretariat
  Details of new NGO position papers on issues related to WTO activities
  received prior to 1st April 2003 are now available on the website.
• Online Newshour special report
  The World Trade Organization: an Online Newshour special report from PBS television service.
• Oxfam Discussion Papers : 3/00
  Institutional reform of the WTO.
  Based on a paper commissioned from J. Werksman for a workshop on "WTO Institutional reform : a development perspective", held in Geneva in February 2000.
• The Present Outlook for Trade Negotiations in the World Trade Organization
  Policy Research Working Paper No. 1992; October 1998 by John Croome from World Bank. Published by World Bank, Development Research Group.
• Reciprocity across Modes of Supply in the World Trade Organization: A Negotiating Formula
  Policy Research Working Paper No. 2373; June 2000 by Aaditya Mattoo and Marcelo Olarreaga. Published by World Bank, Development Research Group.
• A Three-Year Review of the World Trade Organization
  An MA Capstone Policy Exercise from the Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University, April 1, 1998. Completed under the direction of Dr. Steve Suranovic.
• Trade Policies for Electronic Commerce
  Policy Research Working Paper No. 2380; June 2000 by Aaditya Mattoo and Ludger Schuknecht. Published by World Bank, Development Research Group.
• Trading into the Future: the Introduction to the WTO
  Provides information of the World Trade Organization's history, functions, structure, agreements, dispute resolution process, and sector overviews.
• World Trade Organization
  Article written by Sarah Anderson and John Cavanagh of the Institute for Policy Studies, Washington DC, U.S.A. Published in Foreign Policy in Focus, v.2, January 1997.
• The WTO in brief
• World Trade Organization in Depth, from Choike
  Choike is a portal dedicated to improving the visibility of the work done by NGOs from the South.

GATT

• Australasian Legal Information Institute
  Provides information on General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.
• GATT Digital Archive, 1947-1994
  Project by Stanford University to collect digitally a significant collection of archival material, internal documents and selected publications produced by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and its successor organization, the World Trade Organization (WTO).
• IISDnet : Trade and investment
  Provides the history and development of GATT.

Legislation and Treaties

• Market access
  Enhanced pages on market access for goods and on negotiations for non-agricultural market access make it easier to find information on these topics.
• WTO Agreements
  Contains summary and full texts as well as explanations and analysis of The Uruguay Round Final Act.

Membership

• WTO Membership and Observers
  Contains Members, dates of membership, Observer Governments, and International Organization Observers to the General Council.

Ministerial Conferences

• First WTO Ministerial Conference held in Singapore from 9 -13 December 1996
  • International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD)
• Second WTO Ministerial Conference held in Geneva, Switzerland from 18 - 20 May 1998
  • International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD)
• Third WTO Ministerial Conference held in Seattle, Washington State, US from 30 November - 3 December 1999
  • Cato Institute Center for Trade Policy Studies
    The limited (but not sufficiently so) role of the WTO / J.M. Finger
    Paper prepared for the Cato Institute's Center for Trade Policy Studies conference "Seattle and beyond : the future of the WTO", November 17, 1999, Washington, D.C.
  • International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD)
  • Millennium Trade Talks and the 'Battle in Seattle'
    Contains full text of the House of Commons Research Paper 99/107 concerning issues and problems of the third WTO Ministerial Conference on Trade held in Seattle, Washington on 30 November - 3 December 1999. Prepared by Mick Hillyard and Tim Edwards from House of Commons Library, December 1999.
  • Seattle: What's at stake?
    WTO resource booklet for the Seattle Ministerial Meeting.
• Fourth WTO Ministerial Conference held in Doha from 9 - 14 November 2001
  • Australian APEC Study Centre
    Publications from the Monash University centre.
  • CAFOD analysis of WTO Doha Declarations, by Duncan Green
  • Cato Institute Center for Trade Policy Studies
    Whither the WTO? A progress report on the Doha Round by Dr. Razeen Sally. (Trade Policy analysis no. 23, March 2003)
  • Doha declarations
  • Doha Development Agenda : Trade capacity-building database
    Developed jointly by the WTO and the OECD, this database lists projects that assist developing countries make better use of the multilateral trading system.
  • From Uruguay to Doha: Agricultural Trade Negotiations at the World Trade Organization
    Discussion paper 02-13, by Thomas C. Beierle, March 2002
    This paper examines current agricultural trade negotiations at the World Trade Organization, with particular attention to the relationship between liberalization and developing countries' economic growth and food security.
  • A genuine development agenda for the Doha Round of WTO negotiations
    Joint statement signed by CAFOD, Save the Children, Oxfam, Action Aid, World Vision, Christian Aid, The Fairtrade Foundation, Traidcraft, ITDG and World Development Movement
  • Industrial Tariffs and the Doha Development Agenda
    The WTO Secretariat, on 6 May 2003, issued a comprehensive discussion paper. Containing many tables and charts, the paper focuses on the basic mandate given to negotiators at Doha and looks at specific issues facing developed, developing and least-developed countries.
  • International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development
    ICTSD coverage of the Doha Ministerial Conference
  • The Road to Doha and beyond
  • Third World Network
    The 4th WTO Doha Ministerial (9-14 Nov 2001): Reports and Analyses
  • Towards Multilateral Investment Rules? Key Issues in the Post-Doha Agenda by Professor Peter Muchlinski
    This paper is based on research undertaken by the author in his capacity as a senior adviser to the UNCTAD Series of Papers on Issues in International Investment Agreements and as part of the continuing work of UNCTAD arising out of its role under the Doha Declaration.
  • United States Mission to the European Union
    Dossier prepared by the Public Affairs Office of USEU
  • World Economic Forum
    Report from the WEF's 2006 Annual Meeting.
  • The WTO Doha Development Round : the threat to international business of the spread of environmental trade sanctions
    Report by Alan Oxley, chairman of the Australian APEC Study Centre at Monash University and former Australian Ambassador to GATT.
  • WTO Doha Round Bulletin (Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade Office of Trade Negotiations)
    Summarises key WTO Doha Round-related activities in Geneva and Canberra.
• Fifth WTO Ministerial Conference, to be held in Cancun, Mexico, from 10-14 September 2003
  • Center for International Development at Harvard University : Global trade negotiations
    Resources on the upcoming Cancun Ministerial in September 2003
  • Challenges Ahead on the Road to Cancun
    Public symposium hosted by the WTO.
  • Focus on the global South
    Laying the groundwork for Cancun : another Doha "success"?
  • From Brussels to Cancun : European Civil Society Groups launch campaign on global trade and investment talks
  • Global Dimensions (London School of Economics)
    In association with the Commonwealth Business Council, Global Dimensions has established a trade policy work programme. Global Dimensions and the CBC are hosting a number of trade policy round tables in the run up to the WTO ministerial meeting in Cancun in September 2003.
  • Global Dimensions (London School of Economics) The 'Singapore issues': prospects for Cancun roundtable.
    This roundtable was jointly organised with the Federal Trust, and took as its starting point two papers commissioned by the CBC and Global Dimensions.
  • Global Policy
    War on Iraq would affect WTO trade talks, by Gustavo Capdevila
  • International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD)
    Information on WTO Cancun Ministerial Conference 2003
  • Second International Conference on Globalisation. The Road to Cancun...
  • South Centre The WTO Services Negotiations: Some Strategic Considerations
    Given the tight timelines for both bilateral and multilateral services negotiations in the coming months, it is critical that developing countries have a well-designed strategy in place. A new Working Paper by the South Centre provides developing countries support in the development of such a strategy. Authored by Mina Mashayekhi of UNCTAD and Elisabeth Tuerk of CIEL (Centre for International Environmental Law), the paper has been published under South Centre's T.R.A.D.E. series (Trade-Related Agenda, Development and Equity).
  • Whose Trade Organization? Linking Global to Local Issues in Cancun, Mexico
    Reality Tour in Yucatan
  • WTO in 2003: the rocky road to Cancun
    by Dr. Razeen Sally, London School of Economics
  • World Resources Institute
    From Doha to Cancun: the WTO trade negotiations and its implications to communities. Working paper by Vincente Paolo Yu and Antonio G. M. LaVina

News

• Focus(discontinued)
  The official WTO newsletter. Contains information on new WTO developments and activities. Continuation of GATT Focus. (Coverage: No.12, Aug-Sep 1996 -- No.62, Jun 2004)
• WTO News
  Contains information on a great variety of issues related to WTO. Continuation of GATT Press Communique. Includes News, News Archives, Press Releases and Speeches.

Online Publications

• International Trade Statistics
  Contains WTO trade statistics.
• Legal and documentary research at WTO : The new documents on-line database / Jeanne Rehberg
  Description of the WTO documentation system and instructions for using the online documents database.
• Trade Policy Reviews
  Examines trade policies and practices of individual members and the macroeconomic situation.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.From September 2001, clicking on the hyperlink "country name" or "minutes of the meetings" will launch a search in the Documents Online database for all WTO official documents on Trade Policy for that country since 1995.
• WTO Annual Reports
  The Annual report of the WTO is comprised of five chapters which focus on trade policy, research results, the regular activities of the organization and details of its current structure, staff and budget.
• WTO Discussion Papers
  • No. 1 : Industrial tariff liberalization and the Doha Development Agenda
    Containing many tables and charts, the paper focuses on the basic mandate given to negotiators at Doha and looks at specific issues facing developed, developing and least-developed countries.
• WTO Dispute Settlement Reports
  Provides list of Panel and Appellate Body reports.
• WTO Online Official Documents
• WTO Online Publications
  • 10 benefits of the WTO trading system
  • 10 common misunderstandings about the WTO
  • GATS - fact and fiction
  • Future of the WTO
  • Trade & environment at the WTO
  • The World Trade Organization: Understanding the WTO
  • Doha Declarations
  • Focus Newsletter
  • The WTO in brief
• WTO Special Studies
  The purpose of the special studies of the Economic Research and Statistics Division is to use economics and economic research in order to help structure the discussion of issues of relevance to the WTO.
  • Special Study no. 1: Opening markets in financial services and the role of the GATS
  • Special Study no. 2: Electronic commerce and the role of the WTO
  • Special Study no. 3: Trade, finance and financial crises
  • Special Study no. 4: Trade and the environment
  • Special Study no. 5: Trade, income disparity and poverty
  • Special Study no. 6: Market access: unfinished business. Post-Uruguay Round inventory and issues
  • Special Study no. 7: Adjusting to Trade Liberalization - The Role of Policy, Institutions and WTO Disciplines

Online Training

• Technical Cooperation Handbook on Notification Requirements
• The World Trade Organization: a Training Package
• WTO Trade Policy Courses

Trade and Environment

• Committee on Trade and Environment Working Documents
  Lists all working documents of the WTO's Committee on Trade and Environment (CTE) since 1995.
• The International Institute for Sustainable Development's Trade and Investment Publications
  This page lists analyses, books and conference papers released by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD)'s Trade and Investment Group. Full text is available for most of the publications listed.
• Sustainable Developments
  Sustainable Developments is the reporting service of the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD). Provides timely, professional, high-quality reporting service for conferences, workshops, symposia or regional meetings and disseminates the information extensively via the Internet.
• Trade and Environment Bulletins
  Regular bulletins issued by the WTO Secretariat, summarizing discussions in the Committee on Trade and Environment (CTE).
• The World Trade Organization: An Environmental Introduction
  Publication by Steven Shrybman, Executive Director of West Coast Environmental Law. Published in West Coast Environmental Law, May 1999.
• WTO Committee on Trade and Environment (CTE)
  International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD)'s focus on the WTO Committee on Trade and Environment.
• WTO report: the need for environmental cooperation
  Publication by Hakan Nordstrom (WTO Secretariat economist) and Scott Vaughan (NAFTA Commission for Environmental Cooperation). Published as WTO Special Studies Series, no. 4: Trade and Environment.