SEE
ALSO:
press
releases
WTO news
archives
Mike
Moore's speeches
> Programme
|
  WTO
Director-General Mike Moore, Jeremy Hobbs, Executive Director of Oxfam
International, former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, Bjorn Lomborg,
author of “The Skeptical Environmentalist”, will be among the
high-level speakers addressing the WTO's public symposium on “The
Doha Development Agenda and Beyond”. Launched by Trade Ministers in
Doha, Qatar last November, the DDA encompasses trade negotiations in
seven areas and a broad work programme that will result in new trade
rules for the 21st century.
“The
symposium provides a timely opportunity for civil society,
governmental officials, academics and the media to come together to
discuss and debate the global challenges posed by the Doha Development
Agenda,” WTO Director-General Mike Moore said today. “The
organization of this symposium is in line with paragraph 10 of the
Doha Ministerial Declaration instructing us to ‘promote a better
public understanding of the WTO and to communicate the benefits of a
liberal, rules-based multilateral trading system’”.
“Our
work program has now begun in earnest and there are many serious and
difficult issues to address - from reducing barriers in agriculture to
ensuring adequate and timely technical assistance for developing
countries. I hope this symposium will be used to closely scrutinize
some of the more critical challenges facing today's multilateral
trading system, including how the system is financed and how its
functions”.
Within
the symposium's program, non-governmental organizations will run
sessions on topics of their choice. More than 650 people from WTO
Member and Observer governments, other international organizations,
universities, non-governmental organisations and the media are
expected to attend the symposium. Twenty different presentations and
work sessions are organized over two and a half days on topics ranging
from development issues and food security, to geographical indications
and relations between inter-governmental organizations and civil
society.
|
|
