Columbia International Affairs Online: Policy Briefs

CIAO DATE: 11/2009

Empty Promises: What happened to 'development' in the WTO's Doha Round?

July 2009

Oxfam Publishing

Abstract

The World Trade Organization's Doha Development Round was meant to rebalance decades of unfair rules in agriculture and address the needs of developing countries. Instead, the negotiations have betrayed this promise. The WTO's trade Round has become a ‘market access' negotiation, in which developing countries are expected to give disproportionately more and will receive little but stale promises of the general benefits of liberalisation.