WTO and Inclusive Trade

“Trade has contributed to make the pie bigger, but its shares have not been divided equally. Strengthening the multilateral trading system to make it more open, transparent and equitable could contribute to shared prosperity globally” – Isabelle Durant, former Deputy Secretary-General of the UNCTAD (UNCTAD, 2019)

While free trade and globalization have created jobs, lifted incomes and improved working conditions in some contexts, these trade benefits have not been truly inclusive for all societal levels and for all countries (WEF, n.d.). The COVID-19 pandemic, trade wars and armed conflict have accentuated the need to ensure access to trade benefits and the mitigation of trade risks to marginalized groups, which is why the WTO’s annual Public Forum 2022 Towards a sustainable and inclusive recovery: ambition to action the WTO called for more sustainable and inclusive trade rules (WTO, 2022).

While efforts have been made on a multilateral level to integrate small economies into the post COVID-19 economy, as underlined by the Chair of the Committee on Trade and Development (CTD) Dedicated Session on Small Economies in 2021, the WTO equally assumes a vital role in determining which civil society actors are included in multilateral policy making.

Against this background, the model WTO 2023 aims to examine which and how certain levels of society effectively gain from increased trade as a result of globalization and trade liberalization. By focusing on the multilateral dimension, concerns of developing and least developing countries will be addressed and the degree of inclusiveness of the multilateral policy-making of the WTO will be negotiated. Inclusive trade in terms of societal groups, such as gender, indigenous people and MSMEs, will constitute another dimension of the negotiations.