What does the Qatar Meeting of the World Trade Organization Mean for Human Rights?
Last November as the world focused on the entry of US-allied Northern Alliance troops into Kabul, a few hundred kilometres away in Doha, Qatar, the World Trade Organization (WTO) went into overtime. Negotiations, expected to wind up mid-day on Tuesday November 13, instead continued all night and into Wednesday morning. At stake : the launch of a new round of global trade talks and the credibility of the WTO itself. Diana Bronson, Globalization and Human Rights Programme Coordinator, looks at some of the issues emerging from Doha. The stakes were very high indeed. The besieged and maligned World Trade Organization (WTO) could ill afford another failure a mere two years after the Seattle debacle, where ministers were forced to walk away empty-handed and protestors cried victory. Looming world-wide recession also put pressure on delegates to have a “successful” meeting (defined as agreement on a work programme and launch of a new round). Two years of intense preparation went into this mee
