Development and the World Trade Organization : Proposal for the Agreement on Development Facilitation and the Council for Trade and Development in the WTO

Facilitating economic development of developing countries has become an important agenda in the world trading system today. The growing gaps and disagreements between developed and developing countries on the issues of trade and development has been an important cause of the suspension of the Doha Round negotiations. The success of the current trading system, currently represented by the World Trade Organization, will depend on bridging these gaps between developed and developing countries and balancing and protecting the development interests of developing countries. However, the current trade rules impede the development interests significantly by depriving developing countries of the ability to adopt effective development policies. This paper, built on the author's previous works in the area of trade and development, discusses the inadequacy of the current regulatory framework for trade with respect to development facilitation and suggest a comprehensive regulatory reform to promote development in the current system. The paper also proposes organizational reform in the World Trade Organizations to protect development interests in the world trading system