It’s time African Countries utilized the WTO, Dispute Settlement Understanding more to leverage their International Trade Interests

Abstract

The paper deconstructs the law relating to WTO, Dispute Settlement Mechanisms (DSMs) to establish why African Countries have failed to harness it to leverage their international trade Interests. There is compelling evidence to affirm that many African Countries are marginalized in international trade because many odds including failure to harness the WTO Dispute Settlement are stacked against them. The ability of African Countries in international trade has been saddled by many factors that characterize Less Developed Countries. The Uruguay Round (1986-94) introduced many changes such as the reduced timelines (from when disputes are initiated to when they are disposed of), admission of third parties to represent poor Countries which may be deficient in requisite capacity to handle the complexity of the World trade disputes mechanisms. This paper posits that the marginalization of African Countries in the World trade system is partly caused by inherent factors that saddle them as Less Developed Economies. We adopted hybrid doctrinal and qualitative methodological approaches by way of reviewing WTO relevant Agreements, existing literature and evaluating evidence in the context of objectives for writing the paper. The findings corroborate that African Countries have been sidelined in international trade system because they have not utilized the Dispute Settlement Understanding Agreement to leverage their international trade interest well.