1,720,976 research outputs found
Do WTO rules improve or impair the right to food?
No full textThe global food crisis of 2007–08 seems to be forgotten. Media attention at the time focused on food riots in Haiti and Mozambique, while world leaders and more than a dozen international organizations gathered for several food summits, calling for immediate relief measures. But not a single government seems to remember its obligations under the Right to Food (R2F) which the United Nations (UN) had enshrined back in 1948. Today we have to acknowledge that the R2F still lacks an adequate response under the present multilateral rules and disciplines applying to food production and trade. This chapter examines the present rules and disciplines under the AoA and of those contemplated in the Doha Development Round. Here we find that despite claims to the contrary they contribute precious little to the R2F. Some of the present rules, or the lack thereof, can even act as disincentives for global and national food security. Various forms of production and export subsidies, food aid abuse and export restrictions, are still WTO-legal, with few remedies available to food insecure developing countries. This amounts to a violation of their R2F obligations by many WTO Members
OPEC Production Management Practices under WTO Law and the Antitrust Law of Non-OPEC Countries
No full textThe petroleum production management practices of OPEC member states have always been controversial particularly among the major petroleum-consuming nations of the developed world. While this controversy has traditionally been kept within the realm of politics, it is increasingly taking a legal form. A number of suits have been brought against OPEC, OPEC member states as well as their national oil companies or subsidiaries, often for alleged breach of national competition regulation. There have also been several attempts to use the WTO dispute settlement system to challenge OPEC member states that are also members of the WTO. This article attempts to answer the question of whether the petroleum production management practices of OPEC member states are subject to any external legal controls in the form of international economic law and the competition or antitrust laws of non-OPEC countries
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, the World Trade Organization, and regional trade agreements
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The law of international trade in agricultural products : from GATT 1947 to the WTO Agreement on Agriculture
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Accession for What?:An Examination of Ethiopia's Decision to Join the WTO
No full textEthiopia, a founding member of many of the international and regional organizations today and the second most populous country in the UN list of least-developed countries (LDCs), is currently in the early stages of negotiating its accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO). This article asks the basic questions of why Ethiopia uncharacteristically stayed out of such an important multilateral endeavour for so long and why it wants to join now, and what the potential implications of the decision to join the system will be for the legal, institutional and economic policy landscape of the country both during the accession process as well as after achieving membership. The Ethiopian Government argues that WTO accession would help facilitate economic growth, attract foreign investment, secure predictable and transparent market access, and allow it to have a say on the direction of globalization. While many of these are in line with the conventional explanations about the benefits of WTO accession, this article argues that the balance of rights and obligations contained in the WTO legal framework and its enforcement mechanism mean that Ethiopia's ability to make use of the system to realize these ambitions is, at best, limited. However, the article concludes with a positive note that, if the accession process is handled carefully and final membership obligations carried out in good filth, WTO accession is likely to contribute to those goals indirectly through, inter alia, the review and reform of national laws and policies, the establishment of objective, impartial and effective administrative procedures and implementing institutions, and its potential overall contribution to the establishment of a system of rule of law, administrative transparency and accountability in the country.</p
Legal issues in international agricultural trade:the evolution of the WTO Agreement on agriculture from its Uruguay Round origins to Its post-Hong Kong directions
Full text linkThe bumpy ride towards the establishment of ‘a fair and market-oriented agricultural trading system’ at the WTO:reflections following the Cancun setback?
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