At a 5 March Special Session of the WTO Committee on Trade and Development (CTD-SS) on special and differential treatment (S&D) for developing countries, developed and developing country Members sparred over the question of whether or not the CTD-SS was a negotiating forum. Despite the fact that the CTD-SS faces a short timeline before it must report to the General Council in July, delegates did not discuss the point-by-point substance of S&D, but spent most of the meeting addressing legal aspects of what, when and how the CTD-SS should tackle its mandate.

According to section 12(i) of the Doha Decision on Implementation, the CTD must do the following three things, and then to report to the General Council with clear recommendations for a decision by July 2002. These are: (a) to identify those special and differential treatment provisions that were already mandatory in nature and those that were non-binding in character; (b) to consider the legal and practical implications for developed and developing Members of converting special and differential treatment measures into mandatory provisions; and (c) to identify those that Members consider should be made mandatory.

According to one "disappointed" developing country source, the meeting dragged on organisational issues and on questions about how Members should report to the General Council and the Trade Negotiations Committee. In particular, delegates disagreed over whether the CTD-SS was a negotiating forum or not.

Both Pakistan and the Philippines, supported by a number of developing countries, said that the Special Session should be in negotiating mode. As such, they linked this to whether observers should be allowed to attend. A number of observer organisations are authorised to attend regular sessions of the CTD on an ad-hoc basis, but would not be likely to attend if the Special Sessions were allocated as negotiating fora. However, the Quad (Canada, the EC, Japan and the US) argued that the Special Sessions were not in negotiating mode. One Quad source, referring to a recently-formed Special Session on Trade Facilitation, said that a non-negotiating Special Session already existed, so the CTD- SS was not necessarily bound to engage in negotiations. Trade sources said that the EC further blocked the process by saying it needed to go back to its capitals in order to determine how to proceed on these questions.

Members decided to skirt the issue of whether or not the Special Sessions on S&D were negotiating forums and of observership; they will come back to these matters in a later meeting. CTD-SS Chair Amb. Ransford Smith of Jamaica told the meeting that he would conduct informal consultations in an attempt to move the process forward, and proposed five meetings to focus in particular on the three points of the mandate contained in the Doha Decision. Amb. Smith put forward the dates of 9 April, 16 May, 14 June, 2 July, and 17 July as possible meeting times.

Sources indicate that Members could use the first meeting to submit proposals on S&D provisions deemed to be mandatory. The next two could be used to address the question of effectiveness (i.e. go into detail on measures that could help least-developed countries and others take advantage of existing S&D provisions), and the final two could focus on how the CTD Special Session could report to the General Council.

Many developing country delegations were further disappointed, as the discussion did not go into a provision-by-provision assessment of S&D as they had hoped. One Quad source said they had hoped to see proposals submitted on S&D, but that none had been forthcoming.

As reflected in paragraph 44 of the Ministerial Declaration (WT/MIN(01) DEC/1), Ministers had agreed that that all S&D provisions should be reviewed with a view to strengthening them and making them more precise, effective and operational. As a starting-point for the discussions, Members are using information provided in Document WT/COMTD/W//77/Rev.1 (not yet available online). That document contains, amongst other things, a discussion of the operation of S&D, an illustrative list of questions, and also the nucleus of a distinction between provisions that were mandatory and those that were not.

ICTSD Internal Files.