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TWN Info
Service on WTO and Trade Issues (Mar21/16) Geneva, 12 Mar (D. Ravi Kanth) – The WTO Director-General Ms Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has created a “Delivery Unit” within the Secretariat that will focus on delivering results that members want, in what is going to be the Secretariat’s overarching role ostensibly for delivering balanced outcomes at the 12th ministerial conference (MC12), according to a document seen by the SUNS. In a notice issued to the staff on 11 March, Ms Okonjo-Iweala said the unit will work directly with her as well as units across the Secretariat “to better support Member’s efforts to reach concrete outcomes that will contribute to our work on growth, recovery and sustainable development – and to a renewed and reinvigorated WTO.” The core function of the Delivery Unit will include working directly with the “DG and in close coordination with line Divisions and WTO members” to provide “solutions-oriented support and strategic direction aimed at enabling members to achieve deliverables for MC12 [to be held in Geneva in December].” It will track “developments carefully, and where progress appears to be slipping off-track, the Delivery Unit will work with relevant Divisions to develop recommendations to me for how to facilitate convergence among Members,” said the DG. According to the notice to the WTO staff, the “key immediate priorities include developing an effective WTO response to the COVID-19 pandemic, fisheries subsidies, dispute settlement, agriculture, development including LDCs and a more coordinated approach to discussing WTO reform issues, as well as the Joint Statement Initiatives.” The DG says that “this approach has worked for me before, helping provide the direction and focus needed to implement objectives and deliver results,” hoping that “it will work here, but it is not set in stone.” According to the notice, Ms Okonjo-Iweala says that she “will monitor the Unit’s progress, and if it is not working as planned, we will adapt and improve it, or try something else,” insisting that “it is consistent with my aim to do things differently, to increase the impact and the visibility of the important work done by both Members and the Secretariat.” She has appointed Mr Edwini Kessie, the current director of the Agriculture division, to head the new unit, with Secretariat staff who will be seconded to the Unit for an initial period of 5 to 6 months, with the idea that other staff will rotate through the unit depending on changing priorities and needs. According to several people, the new Delivery Unit and its stated objectives are inconsistent with the DG’s role as enshrined in paragraph 4 of Article VI of the Marrakesh Agreement. Under this provision, “the responsibilities of the Director-General and of the staff of the Secretariat shall be exclusively international in character. In the discharge of their duties, the Director-General and the staff of the Secretariat shall not seek or accept instructions from any government or any other authority external to the WTO. They shall refrain from any action which might adversely reflect on their position as international officials. The Members of the WTO shall respect the international character of the responsibilities of the Director-General and of the staff of the Secretariat and shall not seek to influence them in the discharge of their duties.”
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