Posts tagged ‘Reform’
African Countries and the WTO Dispute Settlement System: strangers in an alien land?
In 1995, the World Trade Organization (WTO) came into existence, introducing some key reforms to the long-standing General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) system. The most important reform was the setup of the Dispute Settlement System (DSS). There was now a greater clarity of rules and regulations, binding decisions and an Appellant Body. One would imagine that the highly juridical and legalized system based on equality and strict rules would be somewhat advantageous to African countries (the largest group in the WTO). This has not been the case. In fact, African countries’ involvement in the WTO dispute settlement system in the first decade has been minimal at best. In the first decade (1995-2005) of the DSS, no African country was ever a complainant in a dispute and in only six cases was an African country a respondent. In addition, Egypt is the only African country to have shown initiative and request the establishment of a panel, in the Egypt-Definitive Anti-dumping Measures on Steel Rebar from Turkey case. The one comparatively active area for African states in the DSS is their participation in disputes as third parties. Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Senegal, Cameroon and Cote-d’Ivoire have all participated in this capacity.
The most common reasons propagated for this trend include the low volume of global trade emanating from and to Africa, African countries’ inability to navigate the complicated and expensive DSS, and a lack of expert…
Judicial Reform Coming to China! International Community Elated!
April 1: This morning, China’s Minister of Justice Wu Aiying held a press conference in which she declared the need for greater judicial transparency. The announcement came in the wake of a decision involving four executives of the mining corporation Rio Tinto, who were accused of bribery and stealing trade secrets. The defendants were sentenced to 7-14 years in prison, including 10 years for Australian Stern Hu.
“There are important questions about due process raised by this case,” Ms. Wu commented, “particularly since large parts of the case were heard behind closed doors.”
Ms. Wu announced that she intended to introduce a broad set of reforms to the Chinese justice system, which would greatly strengthen the principles of judicial impartiality, transparency, and fairness.
“If we are able to pass these reforms, after rigorous debate in the People’s National Congress, it will be a great step forward for the cause of justice in China.”
She also noted that tendency of Chinese courts to give exceptionally harsher sentences to those who plead not-guilty (leading to nearly universal pleas of guilty, as in the Rio Tinto case) goes against the principle that a defendant should be presumed innocent. She expressed concern that such cases as these were hurting the reputation of China’s justice system internationally.
Several high-profile international cases had indeed strained relations between China and various Western countries recently. China’s execution on December…
