The Director General of the World Trade Organization (WTO), Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, is expected to serve a second term at the head of this institution after the closure of the nomination process without presenting another candidate for this position.
The WTO is a forum where new trade rules are negotiated or updating those that already exist and are applied between 164 member countries of the organization, in areas as sensitive as agriculture, an area in which no significant progress has been made over the last twenty years due to the divergent interests of countries.
Okongo-Iweala, Nigerian economistwill complete his first five-year term as director general on August 31 and everything indicates that he will join a second after receiving clear signs of support from the majority of member countries – particularly developing countries – at the start of the selection process. of candidates.
The president of the General Council of the WHO, the body that brings together ambassadors from member countriesindicated that he will inform you in the coming days what the next steps in the electoral process will be with a single candidate.
The great task of the WTO is ensure that countries comply with their legal trade obligations and that fair competition is respected and, in this area, it also provides space for countries to resolve their trade disputes, whether amicably or through a mechanism similar to arbitration.
However, this latter role has been seriously diminished in recent years because the appeals body of your dispute resolution system is not working since the end of 2019 because the United States has been blocking the renewal of their referees.
Washington believes it has exceeded its functions and that some of its decisions go against American sovereignty.
The re-election of Donald Trump for the presidency of the United States represents a additional challenge for the organizationsince during his first mandate, he had already threatened to withdraw his country from this institution if it did not undertake the reforms that he considered necessary, even if his criticisms at the time were not limited to the WTO but affected a whole series of international organizations.
