Campaign on “What Would Happen to a World without the WTO?”

Since the early 1990s, CUTS International has been at the forefront of propounding a pro-trade, pro-equity voice at the GATT/WTO. It has advocated reforms in the organisation, particularly for increased and effective participation of developing and least-developing countries in its bodies including conducting a comprehensive review of the delivery of its trade-related technical assistance programme.

In order to continue its deliberations about the broader role of the WTO in governing international trade and trade-related issues, particularly in a post-pandemic world and stressing on the imperative of systemic reforms including answering questions on the legitimacy of the WTO, CUTS International has started a Campaign titled What Would Happen to a World without the WTO?”.

The premise of this Campaign is that along with a huge number of losses of human lives and concomitant miseries, the ongoing global pandemic as a result of novel Coronavirus (Covid-19) is creating havoc in all walks of life. Economic, social, and political life across the world has got disrupted and is expected to unfold in the coming weeks, months, and maybe years. It is having and will have serious ramifications across various sectors, international trade being a major one of them.

Unless they are addressed in a balanced manner by taking into account all interests, trade-related measures and counter-measures to address the existing as well as emerging pitfalls of this pandemic may spiral into a slippery slope of protectionism, spiralling between supply and demand-side shocks.

Therefore, in April 2020, CUTS International has issued a statement for endorsement COVID-19 and a Global Call to the WTO Members: Pledge for Trade as a Global Public Good.

Other than issuing a Statement for “pledging trade as a global public good”, it covers a series of webinars with high-level stakeholders from around the world, discussion papers, etc.