The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an organization that intends to supervise and liberalize international trade. The organization officially commenced on 1 January 1995 under the Marrakech Agreement, replacing the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade(GATT), which commenced in 1948. The organization deals with regulation of trade between participating countries; it provides a framework for negotiating and formalizing trade agreements, and a dispute resolution process aimed at enforcing participant's adherence to WTO agreements, which are signed by representatives of member governments and ratified by their parliaments. Most of the issues that the WTO focuses on derive from previous trade negotiations, especially from the Uruguay Round(1986?1994).
The
organization is attempting to complete negotiations on the Doha
Development Round, which was launched in 2001 with an explicit focus on
addressing the needs of developing countries. As of June 2012, the future of
the Doha Round remained uncertain: the work programme lists 21 subjects in
which the original deadline of 1 January 2005 was missed, and the round is
still incomplete.[8] The conflict between free trade on industrial goods
and services but retention of protectionism on farm
subsidies to domestic agricultural sector(requested by developed
countries) and the substantiation of the international liberalization
of fair trade on agricultural products (requested by developing
countries) remain the major obstacles. These points of contention have hindered
any progress to launch new WTO negotiations beyond the Doha Development Round.
As a result of this impasse, there has been an increasing number of
bilateral free trade agreements signed. As of July 2012, there were
various negotiation groups in the WTO system for the current agricultural trade
negotiation which is in the condition of stalemate.WTO's current Director-General
is Roberto Azevêdo, who leads a staff of over 600 people
in Geneva, Switzerland. A trade facilitation agreement known as
the Bali Package was reached by all members on December 7, 2013, the
first comprehensive agreement in the organization's history.
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