Previous WTO meetings

Rainbow Warrior sails into Doha, challenging the WTO to use the 4th Ministerial Conference to force the US to commit to the Kyoto Protocol.

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Meetings of Ministers are held at least once every two years. At these meetings, decisions are taken that are legally binding on countries, and negotiations take place on a variety of different issues.

This year, the 5th round of WTO trade talks will take place in Cancun, Mexico from 10-14 September 2003. The first four such meetings were held in Singapore (1996), Geneva (1998), Seattle (1999), and Doha (2001).

Even though the WTO is a fairly new institution, there has been public scepticism and concern about how it functions since the beginning. In 1999, public doubt turned to outrage. Around 50,000 people showed up at the 3rd Ministerial Conference in Seattle in to protest how unfairly the WTO works and what it was doing (and continues to do) to the environment and human well-being. Eventually, the negotiations in Seattle fell apart, leaving the meeting a complete failure.

But this wasn't the end of the WTO. Instead, the organisation chose to hold the next meeting in the more remote city of Doha, Qatar, a ploy to ensure that the disaster of Seattle would not be repeated. In Doha, in fact, far fewer NGOs were present - exactly the goal of the WTO.

Governments also tried to change the outlook of the WTO, by agreeing to a "development agenda" that would be able to deliver economic benefits to developing countries in Africa, Asia and the South Pacific, and Latin America. Promises were made to developing countries, such as giving them greater access to life-saving medicines, as well as greater access to markets for their agricultural goods (anything from produce, to cotton, coffee and other crops that form a big part of some developing country economies).

Because of the focus on these "development" issues, the Doha trade round was nicknamed a development round. But these were the most controversial issues at that meeting. What is worse, some countries are now trying to backslide on commitments that were already agreed in Doha. For example, despite the fact that countries agreed by consensus to make medicines available to developing countries, the US continues to block an agreement.

So far, the promises made in Doha have not been fulfilled. Developing countries continue to operate at a disadvantage in the world of global trade and commerce.

Visit the Greenpeace website for the WTO's 4th ministerial conference (2002).