The OECS Technical Mission to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), working with the Small Vulnerable Economies group, has won a symbolic victory for small States. This victory has been realised with the General Council endorsing a package of proposals that seeks to accommodate the needs of small States in the implementation of obligations arising out of membership in the WTO.     

The acceptance by the General Council, the highest decision-making body at the WTO, of this package of proposals, now provides legal certainty to donors, that where practicable, multilateral agencies could target regional bodies for the disbursement of technical and financial assistance. While the option of direct multilateral support to regional bodies has always existed, explicit recognition by the WTO of this option will greatly assist regional bodies in attracting multilateral technical assistance. In this regard, the proposals endorsed seek recognition with respect to the following WTO agreements:

The Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS) - this relates to food safety as well as animal and plant health; The Agreement to Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) – this agreement seeks to ensure that technical procedures, testing and certification procedures, do not create unnecessary obstacles to trade in industrial goods, and The Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) – which deals with intellectual property law in international trade.

Elliott Paige, Chargé d'affaires of the OECS Technical Mission in Geneva remarks that the successful adoption of the proposals marks the first time that the WTO has agreed to a specific package of measures put forward by the Small Vulnerable Economies group. The OECS Technical Mission to the World Trade Organisation serves the independent members of the OECS “It’s very timely from the point of view that not a lot has been happening and not a lot has happened in a positive way for small countries and for small countries to really have a sense that the WTO is also for them. They can grow. Being members of the WTO, they need to get something out of it and this is one start. It helps to build the confidence of small countries recognizing that being a member of the WTO also has some value…It’s important for the credibility of the multilateral trading system that we are all indeed treated equally. The WTO does not normally recognize differentiation among developing countries”-Paige.  

From the inception of the WTO, small developing Members have argued that the rules of the multilateral trading system do not adequately reflect the peculiar vulnerabilities of small States like those of the OECS. To this end, small States continue to demand that the legal architecture of the WTO be made more responsive to the sensitivities of its smallest and most vulnerable Members.

While WTO rules differentiate between developed and developing Member States, those rules do not provide for further sub-categorisation of small vulnerable economies