INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW

The launching of a broad round of trade negotiations by the World Trade Organization (WTO) Doha Ministerial Conference in November 2001 and subsequent developments in the negotiations, including several missed deadlines for advancing through the various stages of the negotiations and the failure of the 5th WTO Ministerial Conference (Cancun, Mexico, 10-14 September 2003) to resolve many fundamental issues, have increased the urgency of immediate support to FAO member countries for their effective participation in the negotiations. These negotiations are of vital interest to member countries and are likely to have important implications for the international regulatory framework for the production of, and trade in, agricultural, fisheries and forestry products, as well as for food security, at the global, regional and national levels. In order to assist member countries to be well-informed, and so that all can participate effectively as equal partners in the negotiations, FAO is strengthening its programme of technical assistance particularly for developing countries and countries in transition.

The provision of information and analysis on trade issues affecting agriculture, fisheries and forestry and assistance to member countries to build trade-related capacities have been long-standing activities of FAO. Moreover, the Plan of Action of the World Food Summit commits FAO to assist developing countries on trade issues and, in particular, in preparing for multilateral trade negotiations including in agriculture, fisheries and forestry inter alia through studies, analysis and training. This commitment has been reaffirmed by the 31^st FAO Conference and is also embodied in the FAO Strategic Framework. Since the coming into force of the Uruguay Round Agreements in 1995, FAO's trade-related assistance has been significantly expanded.

During 1999-2001, FAO implemented an "Umbrella" Programme on trade-related capacity building, with a focus on strengthening the participation of developing and transition countries in multilateral trade negotiations through a deeper understanding of those WTO Agreements that affect agricultural trade, as well as fisheries and forestry, notably the Agreement on Agriculture, the Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) and Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) Agreements and the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Standards (TRIPS) Agreement. Fourteen subregional workshops were organized under the programme and reached a total of 850 officials from 151 countries. In addition, substantive reference materials were developed and disseminated. The programme was funded largely through extra-budgetary support from a number of member countries, but also from FAO's regular budget, and was implemented with the participation of other agencies, notably WTO, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the World Bank, regional organizations and academic institutions.

These organizations have also been offering/financing training on multilateral trade negotiations. The WTO offers training courses to government officials at WTO Headquarters. It also offers, in a pilot phase, both training-of-trainers and distance-learning. The World Bank has launched in 2000 a three-year capacity building programme, aiming to help developing countries participate more effectively in the successive rounds of WTO negotiations. UNCTAD created its "Commercial Diplomacy" programme to provide capacity building in trade negotiations. The European Union (EU) has been financing and organising various training activities related to multilateral trade negotiations. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has its "Trade and Investment Programme", which aims at helping developing countries to improve their ability to participate in the global trading system and to reform their commercial laws. However, none of these programmes exclusively address the negotiations on the agricultural sector as FAO's Umbrella Programme does.

A review of the programme by workshop participants indicates that it was considered to be effective in its primary goal, which was to deepen the understanding of the WTO Agreements and their consequences for agriculture, trade and food security. However, this achievement was not sufficient, as substantial gaps still remain in the institutional, human and production capacity of those countries that were involved in, and benefited from, the programme. These gaps affect their ability to participate effectively in future trade negotiations, to take advantage of trade opportunities and to cope with the new competitive challenges of globally integrating markets. The bridging of these gaps depends in large part on the alleviation of various supply-side constraints, which require not only building effective institutions but also increasing investment to make their economies competitive. Thus, parallel action is necessary on both fronts, i.e.: capacity to negotiate multilateral trade agreements, on the one hand, and supply-side strengthening, on the other.

FAO's assistance programme to member countries on trade-related matters therefore has a two-prong focus: (i) immediate, directly related, support to member countries for the multilateral negotiations; and (ii) capacity building of institutions and human resources so as to enhance capacities over the medium-term to take advantage of trading opportunities. This note outlines FAO assistance programmes covering these two aspects^[1].

An overview of areas of FAO's technical expertise in relation to the current WTO agreements of relevance to food, agriculture, fisheries and forestry is provided in Table 1.

General objective

The general objective of the Programme is to enable governments and stakeholders of the civil society in developing countries and countries with economies in transition to acquire the necessary information, knowledge and expertise for effective participation in the multilateral trade negotiations, as well as for taking advantage of trading opportunities, with specific focus on the critical linkages among agriculture (including forestry and fisheries), economic development, poverty reduction and food security.

This effort will be carefully coordinated with those of other providers of relevant technical assistance in this field.

Target audience

In principle, all developing countries and countries with economies in transition are eligible to participate as beneficiaries. FAO will, however, ensure that its initiatives under this programme will not duplicate or compete with those of other providers of relevant technical assistance. Participants will include: agriculture and trade policy makers and policy analysts, negotiators, specialists in sanitary/phytosanitary issues, plant protection and animal health protection; specialists in international legislation concerning intellectual property rights; producers' associations, industry and trade associations.

Programme design and co-ordination

The Programme contains two major components:

• support for the multilateral trade negotiations; and,

• support on other WTO issues and Agreements (SPS, TBT and TRIPS).

These will be implemented by eight technical services of FAO in collaboration with FAO's Technical Cooperation Department, Field Offices and Liaison Office in Geneva. The Interdepartmental Task Force on Multilateral Trade Negotiations will have the overall responsibility for guiding and supervising the preparation and implementation of the entire capacity building programme. A brief presentation of each component is provided in the following pages. Full-fledged project documents are available on request.

Table 1: FAO areas of technical assistance related to relevant WTO Agreements

¹ Agreement on Agriculture
² Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures.
³ Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade
⁴ Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights.

The purpose of presenting the different components under one "Umbrella" is to:

• show a programmatic approach to building capacities for agricultural trade and related negotiation issues in a medium-term perspective, taking into account the required multidisciplinary nature and longer term processes of capacity building interventions;

• present an Organization-wide perspective of all related activities and give an overview of the synergies with the current regular programme work of FAO;

• provide a framework for an ongoing process of project identification and formulation;

• facilitate co-ordination with the capacity building activities of other agencies, such as like WTO, World Bank, UNCTAD and UNIDO;

• facilitate fund raising for the proposed activities/projects by submitting the document to donors as a portfolio of trade-related capacity building activities from which, if so desired, they could choose.

Links with other FAO assistance programmes

This programme, which is focussed mainly on capacity building in the context of the on-going multilateral negotiations on agriculture, complements and will foster synergies with other FAO assistance programmes with trade-related components. These include in particular the Regional Food Security Programme, the Integrated Programme for Building Capacity in Biotechnology, Food Quality and Safety and Phyto- and Zoo-sanitary Standards and support to NEPAD's comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme.

Programme budget

The total amount of the programme elements proposed is US$8 230 000 over the period 2004-2005, broken down as follows.