145/ DDG Wolff: Acceding countries are best champions of trading system “as a support for peace”
9 October 2019
Speaking at a session on “Trade for peace through WTO accessions” at the Public Forum on 9 October, Deputy Director-General Alan Wolff said the enthusiasm of newly acceding countries for using WTO membership as a peacebuilding instrument “is a reason for optimism” at a time of uncertainty for world trade. He underlined the importance of the “Trade for Peace” initiative for deepening understanding on how fragile and conflict-affected countries can use trade, the WTO and its accession process to create greater stability and promote sustainable peace. This is what he said:
Since last year, the WTO has brought the trade community and the peace community together, under the heading “Trade for Peace”, to exchange ideas on how fragile and conflict affected countries can use trade, the WTO and its accession process to create an enabling environment to foster and promote sustainable peace.
In particular, at the last year’s Public Forum H.E. Kay Rala Xanana Gusmão, former President and former Prime Minister of Timor-Leste passionately stressed that “the fragile and conflict affected countries perceive that trade can help them achieve peace”. He affirmed that these countries had great potential to provide the fuel for the economic prosperity of the world, and they were committed to promote “trade for peace”.
Let me provide a brief introduction on the “Trade for Peace through WTO Accessions Initiative”, which has helped the WTO community to deepen our understanding on the linkages between trade and peace through the expansion of our network to the peace community. The Initiative was inspired by the g7+ WTO Accessions Group which was established by seven acceding and recently acceded LDCs(1) on the margins of the 11th Ministerial Conference in Buenos Aires in December 2017. The Group has brought together, for the first time, fragile and conflict affected countries which are aspiring to use trade and economic integration with the international economy as a tool for building their nations, creating greater stability, and giving them more of an opportunity to sustain peace. They are well aware of their special capacity constraints and institutional challenges. They, and we, know that trade does not prevent war. History teaches us that trade does not guarantee peace. However, it does give peace a better chance. For these countries is a central concern in their entering the WTO accessions process.
Their vision has reminded us of the central purpose for the creation of the rules-based multilateral trading system. This is not a creation myth. It is factual history. The multilateral trading system was the vision of countries which had paid a high price for their involvement in the First World War, in the uneasy truce and economic depression that occupied the inter-war period and were then in the process of a Second World War. The thread of that narrative, the link to trade to peace, was lost, forgotten in this modern era. Then, we at the WTO, were confronted with war-torn countries with fragile economies, at the door seeking integration into the world economy through joining the WTO. The newly acceding countries are now the best champions of the trading system as a support for peace. Their enthusiasm for using WTO membership as a peacebuilding instrument is a reason for optimism during a period where the news of daily events in trade is too often far from positive.
Today, we are joined by a new partner, the Institute for Economics and Peace in the Trade for Peace debate. The Institute is the world’s leading think tank which has developed the first indicator on peacefulness and has annually issued it over the past 13 years. It provides the structured analysis on peace and quantify its economic values. The Institute’s “quantification” work, developing global and national indices, calculating the economic cost of violence, analysing country level risk and understanding positive peace, are substantial contributions to understanding the relationship of trade to peace. The Institute’s goal is to induce a paradigm shift in the way that the world thinks about peace, based on data-driven research to demonstrate that peace is a positive, tangible and achievable measure of human well-being and development. Peace is more than the absence of war. It has tangible, measurable benefits.
When one looks at the latest Global Peace Index 2019, acceding governments and Article XII members dominate the very bottom of the list: eight of the bottom ten in the ranking of 163 countries are indeed those associated with those recently or currently moving through the WTO accessions process – Afghanistan (163), Syria (162), South Sudan (161), Yemen (160), Iraq (159), Somalia (158), Libya (156) and Russia (154), with a further three (3) among the bottom 20 – Sudan (151), Ukraine (150) and Lebanon (147).
We are fortunate today to be joined by two representatives of these countries: Libya (156) and Sudan (151): Mr. Tamim Baiou, Chargé d’affaires, at the Permanent Mission of Libya to the United Nations Office at Geneva and other International Organizations in Switzerland; and, Ambassador Osman Mohammed, Chargé d’affaires, at the Permanent Mission of the Republic of the Sudan to the United Nations Office at Geneva. Following the presentation by Mr. Serge Stroobants on the Global Peace Index 2019, the two representatives will provide their perspectives and will reflect on how trade could be used as an instrument for peace in their respective countries which are going through conflict situations.
We begin with the presentation of the main findings of the Global Peace Index 2019. We are most privileged to be joined by Mr. Serge Stroobants, Director of Europe and MENA region at the Institute for Economics and Peace, based in Brussels.
Source: wto.org
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