The Effect of the Advisory Centre on WTO Law: Focusing on Developing Countries' Participation in WTO Dispute Settlement

Abstract

World Trade Organization(WTO) has established a multilateral trading system that Member countries can negotiate, clarify, and litigate the world trade issues. Among three functions of WTO, dispute settlement system has been referred as the core element of the organization. However, despite the substantial evolvement of dispute settlement mechanism from the GATT system, the concern that developing countries, in particular, Least-developed countries are systemically marginalized in the dispute settlement procedure has been consistently raised under the WTO system as well. To address this problem, several WTO Members agreed to establish the Advisory Centre on WTO Law(ACWL).

As an independent international organization in Geneva, the ACWL aims to provide legal training, support and advice on WTO law and dispute settlement procedures to developing countries, least-developed countries, and to economies in transition. Although there has been broad agreement on the success of ACWL, it has been less examined how ACWL has affected developing countries participation in dispute settlement procedure to date. Thus, this study aims to examine what effect the ACWL has brought to WTO dispute settlement system in terms of developing countries participation.

The analysis on caseload and pattern of developing countries disputes and ACWLs activity indicates that the ACWL has introduced several new players into the formal WTO enforcement and empowered developing countries who are already familiar with the DSU to proceed to the implementation stage and attain the result. By providing legal assistance, the ACWL has helped developing countries to pursue their market access right more extensively within the WTO dispute settlement system.