What’s the Doha Development Agenda?

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The Doha Development Agenda is the most recent round of trade negotiations at the World Trade Organization (WTO). It began in November 2001 and is seen as a follow-up to the previous Uruguay Round, which lasted from 1986 to 1994. The Doha Development Agenda attempts to redefine previous agreements on global trade to bring them into line with current political realities. closely, and bring about greater agreement among WTO constituents.

The WTO is the heir to the earlier General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, an organization created after World War II to help regulate international trade. The WTO was formed in 1995 as part of the Uruguay Round, which also established many trade negotiations that have guided the path of international trade ever since. Part of the Uruguay Round was an agreement that a new agreement would start in 1999, to allow member countries to determine what their needs were. That deal, which would come to be known as the Millennium Round, never got off the ground, in part because of massive protests outside the proposed meeting in Seattle.

Before the start of the Doha Development Agenda, the WTO had already met at a Ministerial Conference in Singapore in 1996. During that first conference, they created four working groups to deal with some important issues in the coming years: customs issues, trade and investment, trade and competition, and transparency in government procurement. These issues, the so-called Singapore issues, were considered crucial by several key WTO members, including Japan, Korea and the European Union, but no agreement was reached. As a result, it was decided that any future ministerial meeting would have to contain at least these four issues.

Prior to Doha, there were two more Ministerial Conferences following Singapore, with the second taking place in Geneva, Switzerland in 1999 and the third taking place in Seattle, Washington later in 1999. The Doha Development Agenda was therefore presented at the Fourth Ministerial Conference, Doha, Qatar, 2001. By far the biggest issue on the table in Doha was the opening of agricultural markets, with opening manufacturing markets and expanded regulation of intellectual property also occupying a prominent place. important in the negotiations.

All development rounds have had endpoints incorporated, and the Doha Development Agenda was due to end in 2005, with agreements reached on all key issues. The Fifth Ministerial Conference took place in 2003 in Cancun and was a shocking disaster. The talks collapsed after just four days, when it became clear that the difference between the main issues between industrialized and developing countries was almost irreconcilable. The collapse was seen by many as a victory for the developing countries, the so-called Group of 20, which stood firm in opposition to certain demands that the developed countries were making, particularly in relation to agriculture.

Two further meetings took place between the Fifth and Sixth Ministerial Conferences, one in Geneva in 2004 and one in Paris in 2005. These two meetings were intended to help advance compromises, most notably by removing the Singapore issues from the table altogether. This made it possible to advance and establish guidelines to try to resolve the Doha Development Agenda by the 2005 deadline.

The Sixth Ministerial Conference took place in Hong Kong in 2005 and, once again, resulted in a failure to reach consensus. Some advances were made, however, leading to optimism about the future, even if the proposed deadline was not reached. Further meetings in Geneva in 2006, Potsdam in 2007 and Geneva in 2008 dampened this optimism as, time and time again, no compromise was reached. By late 2008, it had become apparent that the Doha Development Agenda was far from satisfactorily resolved, and negotiations continue slowly and carefully.

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