Outcome and Implications of the Nairobi Ministerial Conference

Abstract

Marking the 20th anniversary of its establishment, the World Trade Organization (WTO) held its 10th Ministerial Conference (MC10) in Nairobi, Kenya in December 2015 amid heightened interest on whether the Doha Round would stay alive. The outcome of the bi-annual ministerial gathering can cautiously be evaluated as a ‘stopgap solution’ to this question, since the small package of deals struck at the ministerial prevented the collapse of the multilateral system as a whole, but fell short of reaffirming the continuation of the Doha Round. The package managed to include several agreements on agriculture and LDC (least developed country) issues, but there remain other important ‘pillar’ issues that have not even been tabled as negotiating agenda, such as NAMA (non-agricultural market access) and services. The Nairobi Ministerial closed without delivering any concerted position on how to deal with the future of the WTO agenda and what approach to employ in tackling these issues. The Ministerial Declaration adopted at the Nairobi Ministerial Conference is evidence of the deep division in positions among the WTO members on how to achieve the WTO’s future agenda, manifested in explicit language that “Members have different views on how to address the negotiations” and that “new approaches are necessary to achieve meaningful outcomes in multilateral negotiations”.