Matters Facing World Trade Organization

The World Trade Organization is a center of the multilateral trading system. Its main functions have been; strive to improve economies of the world, create wealth for its industrialized members, and to open up prospects for poor countries to increase. It is laudable, for handling complains of unfair trade practices by one country against another. Despite this, World Trade Organization is facing a myriad challenges. Because of its ineffectiveness in handling these problems, it seems to have lost its international reputation and stature.

One of the challenges it faces is on agricultural subsidies. In an effort to promote development in a poor country member states, World Trade Organization focused on removing trade barriers in agriculture rather than in manufacturing. Through wealthy countries, it promised to remove trade barriers and provide agricultural subsidies so that poorer countries could export sugar, cotton, rice. They did this bearing in mind that such nations could prosper through agriculture rather than trade. This was agreed in Doha in 2001 in a seminar termed as "Development round". However, there is no such commitment from the stakeholder.

Maskus (2000) argues that international property rights play a key role in international economic relations. These are property rights that are defined by creativity and invention. Such rights include trade secrets, trademarks, and copyrights just to mention a few. International property right protection is rooted in law, and each member country is mandated to provide it (p.127).

Economic activities allover the world gears towards production of goods and services, exchange of such goods in turn rely on protection from expropriation by imitation or copying. This protection has been guaranteed by the world Trade Organization laws.

In conclusion, World Trade Organization in settling disputes has been considered to be more objective than the individual countries. However, World Trade Organization needs to be empowered to enhance its effectiveness in its working.