Politics of aid / Comment
The recent WTO summit held in Hong Kong: a real opportunity for development?
10/01/2006 By Paula San Pedro
During the Fourth World Trade Organisation (WTO) Ministerial Conference held in Doha in November 2001, governments launched the Development Agenda, committing themselves to put foreign trade at the service of development.
This goal was achieved a year after the Millennium Summit, in which 189 countries promised to reduce the number of poor people by half by 2015.
With the Millennium Goals (MDGs), the need to make important changes in foreign trade rules to confront the global equity crisis and guarantee the legitimacy of the multilateral system was recognised.
Despite the fact that this new WTO mandate has been widely applauded, it should not be forgotten that the relation between trade and development has been hotly debated in different spheres reaching contradictory conclusions. These different, and occasionally opposite, interpretations suggest that it is not a direct link and that it involves multiple conditions.
Some claim that foreign trade, dominated by large multinational companies whose interests govern business negotiations, undermines any opportunity for development and it even stresses imbalances.
Instead, others consider that it is a vital instrument to create wealth and promote development. However, regardless of diverse ideologies and considerations, we live in a global and interrelated world where nations' isolation is already a reality we cannot go back to.
Therefore, it must be guaranteed that both rules and business negotiations include a series of factors necessary to make trade an instrument to promote development .
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Keywords
Aid policy Development Globalization Poverty reductionBio author: Paula San Pedro
BA in Economic Science by the Universidad Autónoma of Madrid and MA in Cooperation and Project Management by the Ortega and Gasset Foundation. She is currently doing her PhD in International Economy at the Universidad Complutense of Madrid.
