DISPUTE SETTLEMENT AND WTO

Dispute Settlement and WTO

DISPUTE SETTLEMENT AND WTO

Role and Function of Dispute Settlement under the WTO

The world trade organization (WTO) is an international body responsible for the negotiation, implementation, and enforcement of trade rules. Established in 1995, it presides over a multilateral trading system of which the core international treaty is the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), as legally consolidated in 1994. GATT obligations are informed by a political and ideological commitment to free trade: At the heart of the GATT treaty are the so-called nondiscrimination principles of most-favored-nation status and national treatment.

The WTO provides a unified system for settling international trade disputes through the Dispute Settlement Understanding and the Dispute Settlement Body (DSB). The DSB is a special assembly of all the WTO members. There are five stages in the resolution of disputes under the WTO: (1) consultation; (2) panel establishment, investigation, and report; (3) appellate review of the panel report; (4) adoption of the panel and appellate decision; and (5) implementation of the adopted decision. There is also a parallel process for binding arbitration if both parties agree to submit a dispute to arbitration rather than to a DSB panel. In addition, during the implementation phase, the party subject to an adverse decision may seek arbitration as a matter of right.

The area of international trade law may be the only one in international law in which binding dispute resolution is available. Although the International Court of Justice has compulsory jurisdiction where accepted, only fifty countries have done so, and fewer than a hundred cases have been referred to it in its first fifty plus years. Further, state parties have ignored many of its decisions. In contrast, more than 150 cases have been referred to the DSB in its first four years, forty have resulted in an order directing a change in national law or policy, and none has been ignored.

Their combined effect is legally to prescribe equality of treatment for imports and exports, such that WTO contracting states subscribe to open, predictable rules of trade. 149 WTO members, more than 97 percent of world trade accounting. At least one meeting every two years will occur, the governing body of the WTO Ministerial Conferences held in Singapore (1996), Geneva (1998), Seattle (1999), Doha (2001), Cancun (2003) Hong Kong (2005). Between the Ministerial Conference of the WTO General Council in Geneva, Switzerland, are the most important administrative functions, including the Organization Trade Policy Review Body and the Dispute Settlement Body meeting. There are a number of technical committees and working groups dealing with individual agreements and thematic areas. One of them is the Committee on Trade and Environment (CTE); check it as a forum for Member States of the relationship between trade and environmental protection, to determine whether changes in trade rules to improve the positive interaction of their perspective. (Young, 2001, 51)

Protection of the environment is embraced as the Marrakesh Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization ...