Abstract Whereas developed countries were the main players in the GATT dispute settlement mechanism, the era of the WTO saw a sharp increase in the developing countries’ participation in trade disputes. Thus, developing countries are active complainants and defendants in the WTO dispute settlement processes. Nevertheless, African states are still marginalised, and this situation has attracted attention of many scholars. As a result, scholars in the field have come up with many reasons to explain why African states do not appear as either complainants or respondents. The reasons for Africa’s non-participation have been argued to include cost of WTO litigation relative to the gains, low trade volumes, legal knowledge and non-integration of African countries in the WTO system. This article seeks to contribute to the existing literature on Africa’s non-participation in the WTO dispute settlement. The goal in this article is to confirm or dispel assumptions that African states have interests that they need to safeguard through dispute settlement but are inhibited from doing so because of the reasons mentioned above. Unlike other studies, the determination on Africa’s non-participation in the WTO dispute settlement will be approached from African states’ participation in intra-Africa RTA dispute settlement mechanisms. While there are six intra-Africa RTAs notified to the WTO, this work focuses on only two – East African Community and Southern Africa Development Community.

Abstract This article provides a legal analysis of microtrade from the perspective of international economic law with the introduction of the basic concept and the mechanism of microtrade. The article analyzes whether the proposed microtrade scheme complies with relevant rules of international trade under the GATT/WTO system. The article also discusses the facilitation of microtrade through government procurement in the context of Aid for Trade and examines the applicability of the WTO Government Procurement Agreement, which has been recently amended, to microtrade with consideration to potential legal implications.

As a new international economic policy, microtrade will face a whole host of issues, including potential legal cultural obstacles. Those legal cultural issues will arise as a result of the different and sometimes conflicting legal cultures of the varied participants within the different fora and communities involved in microtrade from the LDCs to the NGOs to the artisans within the exporting entities. This paper identifies many of the legal cultural issues involved in microtrade, with such identification ideally then permitting the amelioration of the negative impact on microtrade of those legal cultural issues. Many legal cultural issues will be explored, including the legal cultures associated with rural communities, women, international trade law, the microtrade organization, and the legal culture associated with small entities.

The present paper aims to illustrate an alternative trading regulation currently assumed by The Fair Trade Movement and a newly established concept of Microtrade in curving global poverty. The fair trade movement reflects microtrade activities by asserting voluntary initiatives to create mutual benefits between customers from the North and producers from the South. It has established a form of microtrading networks between impoverished producers and Northern importers/retailers oversaw by FLO (The Fair Trade Organization). While claiming to have achieved a certain level of poverty reduction, debate arises whether such appraisal renders a real impact. Both positive and negative feedbacks of the fair trade movement will be explored as well as its future proposal which aligns with microtrade activities.

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Recent development challenges highlight a pressing need to re-evaluate whether the post-World War II behemoths of multilateral development finance are up to the tasks being demanded of them today. The institutions that dominate the current order, the United Nations (“UN”) and the World Bank, are undergoing a crisis of confidence as the world’s development aid donors engage in an ongoing quest to find alternatives to them. This quest takes the form of setting up numerous funds narrowly tailored to finance specific, narrowly-defined needs. Examples of these funds include the Global Environment Trust Fund (GEF) and the Global Fund to Fight HIV Aids, Malaria and Tuberculosis. The Climate Change Fund, proposed in the December 2009 Copenhagen Accord (and recently renamed the Green Climate Fund), is poised to follow this approach. This ad hoc special purpose fund approach lacks a coherent, unifying vision of how to meet today’s development challenges. The funds that have been created fill a need but suffer from several deficits, ranging from governance gaps and lacunae in accountability, to high transaction costs and uncertain status in the international political and legal order. These deficits generate new risks and costs for the international aid architecture. In this Article, I argue that the time has come to re-design the interrelationship between these special purpose funds and the UN and the World Bank so that these funds can operate in sync with these institutions rather than as bypasses of them.

This article examines the objective of sustainable development, listed in the preamble to the Marrakesh Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization. It discusses the relationship between rights to special and differential treatment included in various WTO agreements and the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities that is part of sustainable development.

To the extent that international trade and development policy employs legal methods, institutions and participants, there is a need to take into account the role of legal culture. There are many different legal cultures in the world, including the widely found common and civil law traditions, as well as the many non-western legal traditions and sub-traditions found within the hundreds of different legal systems spread across the globe. International law has, however, traditionally eschewed consideration of legal culture—arguing that international law is unique, is sui generis, and as such domestic legal traditions were not relevant. Yet, the humans involved in creating and nurturing international legal fields and institutions will themselves reflect the legal culture of their home states, and will often import aspects of those legal cultures into international law. The same must be true of international development law. In addition, international legal fields, such as international development law, must often work within domestic legal systems, and as such they will directly interact with the domestic legal traditions. It is thus important to understand the interaction between the legal cultures reflected in the relevant part of that international law and in that of the domestic legal system. Such an understanding can be useful in ensuring the effective interaction of the two systems. This paper explores these themes, continuing the author’s past and ongoing consideration of the role of legal culture in international law, including its role within institutions such as the World Trade Organization.