The WTO dispute settlement system and its relationship to trade in agricultural goods

General objective: to raise awareness of the importance of the multilateral dispute settlement system of the World Trade Organization (WTO) for agricultural trade by Latin American and Caribbean countries.

Specific objectives:

• Provide an opportunity to reflect on the functioning of existing dispute settlement mechanisms and the contributions they make to trade in agricultural goods, especially in the case of developing countries.
• Identify the benefits of participating in the WTO dispute settlement mechanism for the countries of the Americas, especially developing ones, and the challenges involved.

Participating institutions:

Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA). WTO Reference Center at IICA Headquarters.

World Trade Organization (WTO). Institute for Training and Technical Cooperation (ITTC); Legal Affairs Division.

Background:

Today’s globalized economy obliges countries to carefully manage both their domestic and international trade relations. This has led to the establishment of bilateral, regional and multilateral trade agreements (like that of the WTO), to enable the countries to agree on standards that guarantee protection, safety, predictability and transparency. The mechanism that ensures compliance with what is agreed within the organization is the WTO dispute settlement system.

The WTO multilateral dispute settlement system offers the organization’s members numerous advantages: it is designed to be impartial, resolve disputes quickly, ensure that members are treated equitably and consistently and, perhaps most important of all, it takes into account members’ level of development and enables them to question domestic support and subsidies for agriculture, something that is not possible under regional or bilateral mechanisms.