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The Ministry of Economy and Commerce, in collaboration with the International Trade Training Institute of the World Trade Organization, organized a workshop on “The Dispute Settlement Mechanism of the World Trade Organization” during the period from September 27th until September 29th.
This workshop comes within the framework of the Ministry of Economy and Commerce efforts to organize and conduct technical cooperation activities that will support the building and development of capabilities and will deepen the understanding of government employees of the Doha Round negotiations for the World Trade Organization.
A large number of employees from several institutions participated in the workshop, including: the Ministry of Economy and Commerce, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Transport and Communications, the Ministry of Energy and Industry, the Ministry of Justice, the Supreme Judicial Council, the Public Prosecutor, General Authority of Customs, Qatar University, Qatar Petroleum, Qatar Central Bank, Qatar Financial Centre Regulatory Authority, and Qatar Chamber.
Over the three days of the workshop, a number of World Trade Organization experts played an imperative role in clarifying the basic elements of the dispute settlement mechanism of the World Trade Organization, and procedures for settling the commercial disputes within the Organization starting from friendly consultations among the state members. In addition, the experts highlighted the building-up mechanism for the Dispute Settlement Body up to the provisions issued by the organization. The World Trade Organization experts implemented various applications and interactive exercises between themselves and the participants in the workshop, in addition to conducting a simulation to build up a dispute settlement authority and examine one of the disputes.
The dispute settlement mechanism was established immediately after the establishment of the World Trade Organization in January 1, 1995. Since its inception, about 500 disputes were settled between the state members of the World Trade Organization. The dispute settlement mechanism is one of the core pillars of the multilateral trading system, where the mechanism guarantees a safer trading system that is based on clearly defined rules to ensure the preservation of the commercial interests of the state members of the World Trade Organization.