. /.  WORLD TRADE  
ORGANIZATION  TN/CTD/11 
14 February 2005 
 
 (05-0589) 
Committee on Trade and Development 
Special Session  
 
 
SPECIAL SESSION OF THE COMMITTEE ON  
TRADE AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
Report by the Chairman, Mr. Faizel Ismail (South Africa),  
to the Trade Negotiations Committee  
 
I. STATUS OF WORK 
Since the last report to the Trade Negotiating Committee (TNC) , three formal meetings and a 
number of plurilateral consultations have been held in an attempt to take the work on special and 
differential treatment (S&D) forward.   Based on these consultations I had, early in December 2004 
put forward a conceptual approach in line with th e Doha Mandate and the Ju ly Decision to advance 
the remaining work on S&D.  This approach is built along a number of elements, namely:  
• That effective market access for products of export interest to developing countries into 
world markets remains a critical objective of developing countries in the Doha negotiations and an important means of  enhancing their economic development; 
• That enhanced flexibility in WTO rules, w ith appropriate trans itional arrangements, 
should enable the development of developi ng countries. These additional flexibilities 
should be made available to those Members that are in need of them to address 
particular development challenges whilst ensuri ng that there is no a priori exclusion of 
any developing country from such a situati onal flexibility. There should be multilateral 
monitoring of the use of these flexibilities; 
• That these flexibilities in the rules would need to be consistent with a multilateral rules-
based system that can effectively manage the trading relationships between all WTO 
Members.  The disciplines of a strengthe ned multilateral rules-based system also 
remain important for supporting developing countries' efforts to build their 
competitiveness and integration into the world economy;  and  
• That enhanced capacity-building programmes would need to be developed to assist 
countries to implement WTO rules and address supply-side constraints. 
 This approach envisages that within the ove rall context of these elements, Members should 
re-examine each of the remaining Agreement-sp ecific proposals with two possible non-exclusive 
options in mind.  The first option being that th e proposal being addressed could be redrafted or 
merged with other similar proposals in accordance  with the above approach.  The  second option 
would be that Members identify the underlying development issues that the different Agreement-
specific proposals have raised and to then address t hose issues in the context of some of the cross-
cutting issues.  It has also been  suggested that since many of the cross-cutting issues would be 
effectively included in the broad approach, they co uld be clustered into the following four thematic 
groups: TN/CTD/11 
Page 2  
 
a) Addressing the issues of enhanced flexib ility in WTO rules called for by the S&D 
proposals. 
b) Fleshing out the concept of a Monitoring  Mechanism and its implementation that has 
been called for by various Members. 
c) Addressing the need for enhanced cap acity building raised by various S&D 
proposals. 
d) Building the concept of coherence of policy making and implementation that could 
effectively assist the WTO to harness the specialist expertise of other multilateral 
agencies in giving effect to the proposals aris ing from the thematic clusters 1, 2 and 3 
above. 
The intention is not to try and get Members to agree to the suggested a pproach as a consensus 
document, but instead to use the elements of the a pproach to broaden the perspective of the discussion 
in order to identify the underlyi ng developmental issues that the proposals are attempting to address. 
Though Members have been cautiously positive about the suggested approach, they have 
raised a number of concerns and sought clarifications. Most Members feel that any approach on future 
work should be in line with the mandate of para graph 44 of the Doha Ministerial Declaration and 
paragraph 12 of the Decision on Implementati on-Related Issues and Concerns.  In recent 
consultations, Members have also stressed that it is important for the Special Session to begin examining the remaining Agreement-specific proposals,  especially if "clear recommendations for a  
decision" are to be made by the July 2005 deadlin e.  In the context of these discussions, the LDCs 
have proposed, and most Members seem to agree, th at the Agreement-specific proposals tabled by the 
LDCs be addressed as a matter of priority.   
II. FUTURE WORK 
It is intended to hold further small group cons ultations with those Members who still have 
concerns with the approach and to begin work on  the remaining Agreement-specific proposals, giving 
priority to the LDC proposals.  Th e future work, in keeping with th e mandate in the July Decision, 
would combine discussions on the Agreement-speci fic proposals and the underlying cross-cutting 
themes of the clusters in which these proposals fall, so as to enable a dynamic interaction between the 
two.  A number of informal consu ltations are being scheduled, to be followed by a formal meeting of 
the Special Session on 7 April 2005.     
 
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