Consultative Meeting on the Doha Round for the Geneva-Based OIC Member Countries
The Islamic Development Bank Organized a consultative meeting of the OIC members on the 5th of February 2007 regarding the current state of negotiations and provision of technical assistance to build capacity of members to deal with the WTO negotiations. The objective of the meeting was to facilitate the member states of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) in Geneva in the negotiations and build capacity of officials working on WTO issues in their Capitals.
The meeting was well-attended by all Geneva based members of the OIC including those OIC members who are yet to accede to the WTO. In the first part of the meeting, there was an interesting discussion on the current State of play in the negotiations and various members sought several clarifications from Mr. Harsha Singh, Deputy Director General of the WTO. Most of the members were of the view that the negotiations are not transparent as only a few members were involved at present. They strongly desired for multilateralizing the negotiating process. Some OIC Members who were facing various hurdles in joining the WTO also criticized the accession process as being too much influenced by one member who worked against the will of the majority of WTO members.
The second part of the meeting was devoted to the IDB’s Technical Assistance Programme (TAP) on WTO issues. The experts from WTO and different Member states made various proposals to improve cooperation and coordination among the OIC missions in Geneva on WTO issues. It was proposed that IDB needed to re orient its technical assistance approach and focus on assisting members on issues contained in negotiating proposals. It was also suggested that the IDB Technical Assistance should be planned in consultation with members and should be demand driven.
Ms. Shaista Sohail who represented Pakistan at this Session made several proposals to make the technical and capacity building work more effective. She suggested that IDB should now plan to address specifics rather than generalities. Demand driven activities planned annually well in advance by coordinating with and in active consultation with Geneva based delegations would ensure effective use of the technical assistance. A review of the technical assistance delivered by the IDB so far by an independent consultant to come up with suggestions on making technical assistance more effective could also be considered.
Proposals by Pakistan and other OIC members were appreciated by the representatives of the Bank who assured that their future programmes would be finalized in the light of these suggestions. It was also agreed that such meetings would be held at a more frequent interval in Geneva.
