WTO asks member countries for “responsibility” to achieve progress in Abu Dhabi 2024

The general director of the World Trade Organization (WTO)Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, today called on member states of the organization to show responsibility and collaborate so that the 13th Ministerial Conference in February 2024 in Abu Dhabi can be closed with progress in multiple negotiations.

In a meeting with high-level commercial officials from the member states of the WTOmeeting today and tomorrow in Geneva to prepare for the February ministerial, Okonjo-Iweala appealed to the need to move forward at a political and economic moment “very fragile” due to geopolitical tensions and conflicts.

“We have to ask ourselves if we want to show ourselves as responsible citizens or as individuals incapable and reluctant to do our part to respond to global problems”stated the Nigerian general director at the opening of the negotiations, according to the Swiss news agency ATS.

More than a thousand representatives of the member countries participate in the Geneva meetings, in order to discuss the main issues that will be put on the table in the Emirati capital, after last year’s ministerial, held in the Swiss city. , the main advance outside of fishing matters.

After more than 20 years of negotiations, WTO members then agreed to begin eliminating global fisheries subsidies in order to reduce the loss of marine resources around the planet.

This agreement has so far been signed by 40 countries, but nearly 70 are needed for it to come into force, a figure that the WTO wants to achieve before the end of the XIII ministerial, which will be held from February 26 to 29.

The WTO also wants to expand the subsidies eliminated through the agreement: for now it covers those that contributed to illicit, unreported and unregulated fishing, worth about US$20 billion, but it wants to extend it to all those that contribute to unsustainability of fishing, worth about 54,000 million.

Also being debated this week, probably in Abu Dhabi, will be the question of reforming the WTOa hot topic after decades the organization has made very little progress in negotiations.

Furthermore, the WTO currently has its last resort in the dispute settlement mechanism, the Appellate Body, blocked due to the US’s refusal to authorize the appointment of new judges, another point that many members of the organization want to resolve after years of impasse with extensive internal reform.