Making WTO Dispute Settlement Work for African Countries: An Evaluation of Current Proposals for Reforming the DSU

Bartels Lorand ()
Additional contact information
Bartels Lorand: Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom

The Law and Development Review, 2013, vol. 6, issue 2, S47-66

Abstract: Most African countries are WTO Members, and yet to date none has been a complainant in dispute settlement proceedings. One possible reason is that the WTO enforcement regime is not well suited to smaller complainants whose imports from a larger defendant represent only a small share of that defendant’s total exports. Because retaliation rights must be “equivalent” to damage caused, retaliation may not be sufficient to induce the defendant to comply with its obligations. As a result, there may be a chilling effect on smaller countries commencing trade disputes. This article analyses current proposals within the context of the WTO DSU Review that address this problem. It also compares the WTO enforcement regime to general international law on the proportionality of countermeasures and suggests ways to soften the “equivalence” requirement.

Keywords: WTO; DSU; countermeasures; retaliation; proportionality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/ldr-2013-0020 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:lawdev:v:6:y:2013:i:2:p:s47-66:n:3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/ldr/html

DOI: 10.1515/ldr-2013-0020

Access Statistics for this article

The Law and Development Review is currently edited by Yong-Shik Lee

More articles in The Law and Development Review from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().