STUDY OF DOHA ROUNDS & ITS IMPACT ON INTERNATIONAL TRADE & DISPUTE SETTLEMENT MECHANISM

Abstract

The “Doha Development Round was launched in November 2001 in Doha, Qatar, at the WTO’s Fourth Ministerial Conference. The conference endorsed the ‘Doha Declaration’ a statement that focused the agenda on the concerns of the developing countries”. “The agenda included reform to agriculture (particularly reductions in subsidies and tariffs provided by developed countries), reductions in industrial tariffs and special treatment of poor countries (through exemptions from burdensome commitments, and promises of financial assistance). It also promised to redress some of the imbalances from the previous Round, particularly in the area of public health and intellectual property rights”. In this paper, an attempt has been made to study the necessity of Doha Round and its impact on various important issues of international trade and agreements.  Paper will also focus on the outcome of the ninth Doha round which is commonly referred to as the ‘Development Round’. “Trade negotiations like Doha are poorly suited to many aspects of development policy. The Doha Declaration authorized negotiations on some issues in both groups, while giving unprecedented rhetorical prominence to development. However, it failed to act on other issues, or did so only in limited ways, e.g., by requiring new DC concessions as the price of rule modifications”. The paper also tries to critically analyze the underlying challenges that has been observed during the rounds. Also the paper tries to figure out the impact of Doha round on the dispute settlement mechanisms and on the current rounds, and overall effect of it on the present globalized trade world and dispute settlement mechanism. An analysis of effect of Doha Rounds on India has also been carried out in this paper.