World Trade Organization : balancing corporate, governmental and citizen's interests

Abstract

Critics of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and, to a certain extent, of the Breton Woods Institutions (IMF and World Bank), have dubbed these three financial/trade organizations as comprising the new 'axis of evil', in part borrowing on the recent political statement of the Bush administration in relation to rogue states and the fight against terrorism. The implications are in themselves frightening, and how far this is true can only be ascertained through an empirical/objective analysis of these institutions' work and the legal instruments giving them their mandate.