Madelyn Gee for BBC

World Trade Organization: Determining the Means of Classifying Developing Nations

By Madelyn Gee

The World Trade organization is a global  international body that deals with the rules of trade between nations. It's tasked with creating agreements, which are to be negotiated and signed by the bulk of the world's trading nations and ratified within their parliaments. The principal goal of the organization is to help producers of goods and services, exporters and importers to conduct their businesses on a global scale. During today's primary committee session, delegates discussed a proper means of classification of developed and developing countries in regards to trade, in addition to debating the potential of introducing a rubric designed to evaluate countries based upon their level of need for assistance provided by the WTO. Delegations proposed two central rationales to assess a country's request for help: the case by case basis versus a tier system. The former was explained to be a process of classification of countries designed to evaluate the needs of developing countries, and was promoted to be specifically created to appraise a nation's needs and to give the chance for the WTO to respond accordingly. On the other hand, the latter was judged to be a far more generalized strategy. It would allow for the organization to provide help at a considerably faster rate, taking into account the act of avoiding the assessment of countries individually. Also,it would allow grouping nations together to receive whatever preexisting aid was created in accordance with how the country was placed within the tier system.

            There was much division within the committee regarding these two systems. The delegation of Jordan was in favor of implementing a tier system, citing that it provided the extra benefit of flexibility and understanding for developing nations. On the other hand, proponents of the case-by-case system argued that the said methodology would allow the World Trade Organization to evaluate the specifics of a country in need; enabling the institution to have more time to focus on certain countries and to provide perhaps more specific forms of aid in terms of the nation's necessities. Other delegations, such as that of Japan, were in favor of creating an alliance between the developed and developing nations, creating a sort of 'buddy system' among countries that would allow developing nations to create thriving economies and would provide more trading options for already developed countries. All delegations, however, agreed that it was a primary concern of the World Trade Organization to create a sustainable system for allocating assistance among countries that may require the help of the organization.