INTRODUCTION
The World Trade Organization (WTO) is the sole global association addressing the international decrees of trade involving countries. Its major purpose is to guarantee that trade runs as efficiently, predictably, and liberally as probable. The end result is reassurance. Consumers and producers are aware that they can take pleasure in safe supplies and superior alternative of the completed products, components, raw materials and services that they utilize. Producers and exporters are aware that foreign markets will continue to be open to them. The consequence is similarly a more affluent, nonviolent and responsible economic world. Decisions in the WTO are characteristically acquired by consensus among every member nations and they are approved by members’ legislative bodies. Trade hostility is directed into the WTO’s dispute settlement procedure where the center is on understanding agreements and pledges, and how to guarantee that nations’ trade policies stick to them.
A major and foremost disadvantage for developing countries in acceding to the WTO is their capacity to be heard in the decision making of the organization. Issues and proposals for restructurings in the WTO’s decision-making processes increased in eminence first following the fall down of the 1999 Seattle Ministerial Conference, on account of which Members undertook to have debates associated to internal transparency and involvement. The last foremost formal debate among Members on these concerns transpired for the duration of the July 2000 assembly of the General Council. Throughout that gathering, the then-General Council Chairman, Ambassador of Norway, required to recognize, anchored on his discussions with Members, what he sensed were the typical of the debates with regards to internal accountability and involvement towards acquiring a consensus.(WTO:2001)
Succeeding WTO procedure-associated documents, like the TNC Negotiating Principles and Practices and the draft manuscript of the Procedures for the Appointment of Directors-General have indicated to Ambassador Bryn’s declarations as pinpointing of “best practices” in the context of internal accountability and the involvement of Members in decision-making in the WTO.(WTO:2000) Nonetheless, a number of Members have carried on expressing reluctance, exemptions, prerequisites or commentaries relating to Ambassador Bryn’s declaration. (WTO: 2002) This successfully denotes that there is no consensus, particularly from developing nations, on the points acknowledged by Ambasador as “best practices” for WTO decision-making procedures with regard to internal accountability and the involvement of Members.
Official WTO decision-making processes are presided over by Article IX of the WTO Agreement. Consensus decision-making is profoundly entrenched in the WTO decision-making arrangement, (: 2001) and has its origins in GATT 1947 decision-making procedures. Article IX.1 of the WTO Agreement specifically points out that an inclination for consensus decision-making above that of conventional majority vber:2002) Consensus is characterized in the WTO Agreement as the organization involved shall be believed to have made a decision by consensus on an issue presented for its consideration, if no Member, in attendance at the assembly when the decision is obtained, officially opposes to the suggested decision. The description of consensus in Article IX.1 of the WTO Agreement rests significance on the actual and learned or informed attendance of a Member’s delegate throughout the meeting in which the decision is completed; and the compliance of such Member, throughout the meeting, to officially and clearly point out that it is in opposition to consensus on the suggested decision. In this type of “passive” consensus, both nonattendance from the assembly and silence or non-objection throughout the assembly are corresponding to joining in the recommended consensus.
The consensus-based decision-making form under Article IX.1 of the WTO Agreement efficiently obstructs developing nations from getting the best of their equal position with industrial nations by means of the one-country one-vote arrangement which denies them of the advantages of prescribed voting and can work in opposition to them even supposing they hold the majority outlook on a subject.”(UNDP:2003) Conversely, consensus-based decision-making has similarly facilitated developing nations in a number of cases to efficiently stress their right to be heard in GATT and WTO decision-making. The most recent instances were in Seattle, when a collection of African, Caribbean, and Latin American states opposed to their marginalization from the decision-making procedures that transpired for the duration of that ministerial conference and affirmed that they could not adhere in any consensus coming up from such defective procedure. It is also reflected in Cancun, when Members could not arrive to a consensus on the subject of whether negotiations on the “Singapore issues”(:2002) were to have effect subsequent to the ministerial conference, in consequence of which Ministerial Conference Chair Minister of Mexico came to a decision that consensus could not be acquired and chose to adjourn the conference.
However, given the capacity and resource constraints that many developing countries face in terms of their representation and participation in the WTO’s day-to-day business in Geneva, developing countries might not be able to fully maximize the potential of the consensus decision-making approach indicated in Article IX.1 of the WTO Agreement in guaranteeing that their outlook and points of view are unmistakably attended to and completely emulated in the concluding outcomes of the procedure. To deal with the underperformances of the existing “passive” consensus regulation in the WTO, Members could probably aim to spell out the manner through which consensus could be put across.
An “active” consensus could be sought after that would necessitate an active approval by all Members of the suggestion under debate, rather than merely the lack of oppositionar:2001) This change requires being in addition to sufficient and understandable stipulation of information to all Members of the time and program of meetings in which such “active” consensus is required. “Active” consensus can be perceived as a feasible option to that of the “passive” consensus as indicated in Footnote 1 of Article IX.1, or to that of majority ballot under the final sentence of Article IX.1 of the WTO Agreement. The Ministerial Conference, or the General Council in the interim linking assemblies of the Ministerial Conference, can officially generate such an alternative ways of decision-making under Article IX.1 of the WTO Agreement without having to make changes with the WTO Agreement by merely simplifying the form through which Members can articulate their consensus.
Actually, there are previously instances in the WTO for changing from “passive” to “active” consensus. For instance, the prerequisite of “explicit consensus” under the 1996 and 2001 WTO Ministerial Declarations relating to conclusions on the subject of the commencement of negotiations, and on modalities for concessions, of Singapore concerns efficiently needs Members to attain “active” in place of “passive” consensus.() These indications are understandable suggestions on the side of the Ministerial Conference that the “passive” consensus decrees in Article IX.1, footnote 1, of the WTO Agreement, is supposed to, for reasons of coming to a decision on Singapore concerns, be adapted. Specifically, Members’ approval to the commencement of negotiations on Singapore concerns on top of to the modalities for such negotiations have got to be “explicit” – particularly enthusiastically, unmistakably and decidedly articulated or communicated. Silence or non-objection must not, as a result, be accounted as consent. The commonplace connotation of the concept of “explicit” is that it conspicuously articulates all that is represented; leaving nothing simply indirect or suggested. Being “explicit” is becoming exact in communication with such spoken directness and clarity that there is no need for supposition and no space for complexity in comprehending. The Ministerial Conference’s conditions for “explicit consensus” with regard to verdicts concerning the initiation of Singapore concern negotiations and their modalities, for that reason, are precedent-establishing “active” consensus prerequisites in the WTO framework. Therefore, while keeping hold of consensus as the foundation of WTO decision-making and the underpinning of the legitimacy of its imperatives and agreements for all Members, it may possibly be practical for Members to spell out consensus via decision-making in the WTO as necessitating “active” more willingly than “passive” consensus.
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