Expected Outcomes
Under Component I, the final product would be a book consisting of five high quality and well-researched papers on five key negotiating issues under Doha Development Agenda in the context of Post-Hong Kong Scenario. The book will serve as a reference material for trade negotiators, not only from South Asian countries but also for others. The expected impact will be manifestation of South Asian civil society views and concerns on Doha Round of negotiations to the trade community at large.
Under the Component II, the final product would be a book consisting of high quality and well-researched papers suggesting strategies for each of the five South Asian countries on domestic preparedness to enable them to go for necessary domestic policy reforms and their implementation.
Besides these two books, the following would be the outcome of the project:
- Five trade negotiators and five trade policy officials from five South Asian countries will be better equipped to negotiate during the Doha Round for the benefit of the poor, with inputs from stakeholders working on the ground/grassroots. Trade policy officials in South Asian countries will put more emphasis on domestic preparedness vis-à-vis implementing the Doha Round outcomes.
- Through action-research (stakeholders’ involvement in the process of conducting research) five project partners will form an informal forum of state (trade policy officials and trade negotiators) and non-state (NGOs, trade unions, research institutions, WTO experts, business bodies) actors. This forum will help different actors to interact with each other on trade-related issues.
- Through achieving the outputs the project management team at CUTS CITEE would contribute to consolidate multiple stakeholders’ understanding and knowledge on trade issues.
- Through linking Component I & II, there would be five country specific declarations/recommendations and one common declaration on South Asian perspective based on the above five declarations. All six declarations would be released for advocating with trade negotiators, trade policy officials, business bodies, NGOs for wider dissemination and other civil society actors, to help South Asian countries to better understand each other’s concerns. This will be used as lobby tool.