THE WTO AS A FRAMEWORK AGREEMENT AND CODE OF CONDUCT FOR WORLD TRADE
The topic “WTO as A Framework Agreement and Code of Conduct for the World Trade” was placed on the agenda of AALCO at its Thirty-Fourth Annual Session held in Doha, the State of Qatar (1995), the same year that the Uruguay Rounds of Negotiation were completed leading to the establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO) headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. Thereafter, the topic was featured on the agenda of AALCO’s subsequent Annual Sessions, and deliberations were focused on a wide range of issues ranging from promotion of multilateral trade through the acceptance of international instruments, to consenting to a binding dispute settlement mechanism. The AALCO Secretariat was also provided with a mandate to monitor the developments in the WTO, particularly all aspects of the functioning of the Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) and the Appellate Body and their reports.
Recently the work on this topic has been focussed on the need to promote multilateralism and the rule based international trading regime with a view to reform the dispute settlement mechanism. Since the Fifty-Seventh Annual Session held in Tokyo, Japan (2018), the topic has been considered along with ‘International Investment Law’ under the agenda item ‘International Trade and Investment Law.’ The topic was deliberated at the Sixtieth Annual Session of AALCO held in New Delhi, Republic of India (HQ).