This year the World Trade Organisation (WTO) celebrates its tenth year of existence. That celebration is also an opportunity to review, audit, and evaluate its place, progress, and evolution. I am aware that this issue of the World Trade Review is carrying several articles about the 10th Anniversary. This contribution is targeted at the populist perception that the WTO is undemocratic. It also accepts that there are great injustices in the world trading system, but the answer to that is not the rejection of multilateralism but to conclude the Doha Development Round. The problem of poor nations is never too much trade; it is not enough trade. The WTO is unique among the international institutions and plays a vital role in the international architecture.

The WTO Consultative Report, dubbed the ‘Sutherland Report’ (the Report), was released on 17 January 2005 in an attempt to identify the WTO's institutional challenges, to provide non-binding recommendations from eminent persons, and thus to trigger a ‘process of reflection’. While these challenges (and criticism) vary, they are inextricably linked to the fundamental question of the legitimacy of WTO as a system, not necessarily as a mere gathering of 148 Members. In fact, the question has hotly been debated ever since the WTO's creation, generating a great deal of debates and reactions among scholars and politicians alike.

A perception of institutional crisis is pervading international organizations. One evermore fashionable response by the administration of an affected organization is to entrust a group of eminent persons to consider its future. Perhaps not surprisingly the resulting report calls for a politically feasible strengthening of that organization for which it provides good grounds. The most important recent example is the United Nations report entitled ‘A more secure world: our shared responsibility’. A similar approach has been taken by WTO Director-General Supachai Panitchpakdi who called Peter Sutherland, Jagdish Bhagwati, Kwesi Botchwey, Niall FitzGerald, Koichi Hamada, John H. Jackson, Celso Lafer and Thierry de Montbrial on to a Consultative Board, the task of which was to think about the ‘Future of the WTO’ by ‘Addressing institutional challenges in the new millennium’. The group selected is particularly close to the current institution; it includes no scholar, intellectual, or politician who has voiced substantial and serious criticism.

In late 2004, the Consultative Board to the WTO Director General issued its report, ‘The Future of the WTO: Addressing the Institutional Challenges in the New Millennium’. As noted by the Director General in the foreword, a rationale for the report was that ‘there had been too little serious thinking on whether the institutional design and practice that had served the GATT so well would do the same for the WTO’. One of the specific questions raised was ‘Could the WTO with an enlarged membership at various levels of development continue to deliver results?’ (p. 2). The following reflection on the Consultative Board's report is motivated by the latter question, where ‘results’ is defined as promoting not just global economic welfare, but the development prospects of poor members.

At the end of April 2005 we celebrated the 10th anniversary of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Trade policy today extends its influence well beyond what has traditionally been the grist of those interested in international trade policy. Many domestic regulations relating to patents, financial services, subsidies, and support measures for agriculture are subject to WTO disciplines. Some WTO agreements raise ethical questions about the patenting of life forms, precaution and risk management, access to essential medicines, and the rewarding of indigenous peoples for their genetic resources. There are negotiations on the legitimacy of fishing subsidies that lead to fish stock depletion and recent disputes have dealt with internet gambling, genetically modified organisms and the conservation of endangered species.

Chapter IX of the ‘Report of the Consultative Board on The Future of the WTO’ concerns ‘The role of the WTO Director-General and Secretariat’. The report generally expresses concern that the WTO secretariat, although ‘highly skilled’ and ‘well-regarded’ has become ‘more timid’ and passive than in the past, and that the ‘mutual confidence’ between delegations and WTO staff has declined. The report finds that the Director-General has become more of a ‘spokesperson and marketing executive’ for the organization than a leader who represents a driving, proactive force in the shaping and brokering of trade negotiations, as compared with the past where Directors-Generals ‘were sometimes regarded virtually as spiritual leaders of the system’. It warns that the costs of such a trend will be ‘lost efficiency’ and a loss of intellectual leadership.

New food regulations may impede international trade, but multilateral mechanisms can resolve trade conflicts when they do arise. Food safety regulation in industrialized countries during the 1990s increasingly uses risk analysis in a farm-to-table approach, promotes the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) system, and increases the stringency of standards or creates new regulations for hazards. The 1995 Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS Agreement), negotiated by World Trade Organization (WTO) members, establishes a framework to reduce their trade distorting aspects. Three of the principles under the SPS Agreement – science-based risk assessment, equivalence, and harmonization – directly address aspects of food safety regulation that create the potential for trade disputes. In many cases, the science requirements of the Agreement have led to the elimination of unnecessary regulatory barriers to trade. However, some high profile cases remain unresolved because of gaps in convergence around risk management principles that were not spelled out in the Agreement in deference to national sovereignty. The evidence also indicates that there has been limited progress in reducing regulatory transactions costs to trade in food through equivalence or harmonization.

Arguments against free trade are often couched in ethical terms. They usually describe the plight of those who lose from free trade, but seldom consider the costs of protectionism. This essay examines free trade from the perspective of several important ethical theories and concludes that free trade is consistent with each of them.

In reflecting on the record of the World Trade Organization during its first ten years of existence I have chosen to take a ‘political’ view. In doing so, I am aware that other observers might well draw quite different conclusions from my own. However, it is often the political perceptions that count. Indeed, in the past few years, as the WTO has gained recognition in the public consciousness, the work of the institution has sometimes been deflected from what strict economic or legal analysis might suggest as the ‘best courses’ for the overall public good.

This special issue of the World Trade Review marks the 10th anniversary of the creation of the World Trade Organization as part of the agreements reached during the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations. The Editorial Board is pleased to present the reflections of all the former Director-Generals of the WTO on the organization's achievements and shortcomings over the past decade, as well as their thoughts on its future direction.

This rubric is intended for occasional contributions from on-the-ground practitioners in Geneva and national capitals. Our hope is that this category will inspire other practitioners to submit notes and articles – typically in the range of 2,000 to 10,000 words – to the World Trade Review. As with all notes and articles submitted to the World Trade Review, manuscripts in this category will be reviewed by independent referees. However, the focus is intended to be practice oriented and at least one of the two referees will be a fellow practitioner.