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GGIN Policy Brief: The UN’s Our Common Agenda as Inspiration for International Organizations

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This Library includes publication entries by GGIN Partner institutions which are collected in the interest of promoting research and sharing knowledge. Library entries are subject to the academic integrity policies and review processes of the contributing institution. Unless otherwise noted, they are not publications of the Stimson Center, the Global Governance Information Network project, or any other partner institution.
Publication Type
Policy Brief
Contributing Institution
Centro Universitario de la Costa, Global Challenges Foundation, Global Governance Innovation Network, Stimson Center, Universidad de Guadalajara
Availability
Full text. Item is original to GGIN (UPDATES ONLY)
Posted
10 April 2024
Authorship

Abstract

This policy brief shows how international organizations, including those outside the United Nations (UN) system, can progress toward reaching multilateral agreements by de facto aligning their negotiation and communication strategy with the UN Secretary General's Our Common Agenda report (OCA). A case in point is the World Trade Organization (WTO) and its 2022 "Geneva Package.” It highlights the challenges the WTO has faced throughout its existence and examines past attempts, recent efforts, and successful practices by WTO Members and its Secretariat to overcome them. Methodologically, this policy brief compares initiatives conducted by the current WTO Secretariat leadership with the OCA areas of action. This analogy shows how the current WTO Secretariat bolstered a sense of purpose for the WTO by emulating the OCA areas of action and enabled its Membership to agree consensually in 2022 on the Geneva Package at the WTO’s Twelfth Ministerial Conference (MC12). It concludes that even though the MC12 Outcome Document sets out the importance of strengthening a rules-based, nondiscriminatory, open, fair, inclusive, equitable, and transparent multilateral trading system with the WTO at its core, Members still need to implement these principles at a domestic level. At a multilateral level, Members should keep WTO reform focused on how trade matters to "We the peoples,” and keep strengthening inclusive multilateralism. Strategically, the brief proposes that project development include existing flexible mechanisms for negotiating new substantive rules, and dispute settlement that underpins a rules-based system. Furthermore, due to the sluggish process of revitalizing the WTO adjudicative function, more preventive and accountable actions for Members that violate WTO law should also be elaborated.

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