The Third meeting of the Working Party (WP) on the accession of Iraq to the WTO was held on 18 July 2024. Consecutively, the WTO membership process entered into a new phase that requires substantive technical and legal preparations to respond, on the one hand, to a wide-ranging questions formulated during and after the WP by WTO member countries, as part of the multilateral examination of the Iraqi trade regime, and to meet, on the other, their demands related to bilateral tariff concessions and market access for services.
This exercise involves, on the part of Iraq,the conduct of a comprehensive legislative and regulatory reform to bring into conformity its trade-related legal and institutional frameworks with GATT/WTO rules. In this context, Iraq has already received a significant number of queries on its foreign trade regime, as well as on its initial offers in goods and services, submitted to WTO members on 3 May 2024.
In this regard, being a developing and a post-conflict nation, Iraq faces particular challenges to deal with the scope and complexity of the legal and technical obligations associated with WTO accession. The trade officials involved in the accession negotiations generally lack the experience, expertise and skills in trade agreements’ negotiations. Moreover, the trade supporting institutions are hardly prepared for such fastidious undertaking.
Against this background, and the request of the Ministry of Trade of Iraq, UNCTAD will undertake an advisory mission to Baghdad, from 6 to 9 October 2024, to guide and support the officials and negotiators in the organization and delivery of the technical preparatory accession-related work, including replies to WTO members’ clarification questions on the systemic issues affecting consistency of the foreign trade regime of Iraq with core WTO multilateral agreements.
In coordination with the Ministry of Trade, UNCTAD has drawn up a road map detailing the priority areas of interventions and the specific time frames for the completion of the planned activities over the period of October–December 2024.
During this advisory mission, UNCTAD experts are expected to organize a series of interactive sessions and meetings with officials from line ministries and the most concerned government bodies involved in the WTO accession process to provide them with the required advice and technical support. The list comprises the following ministries and public institutions: Trade, Industry, Agriculture, Health, Planning (Central Organization for Standardization & Quality Control), Education and Higher Education, Labor and Social affairs, Finance (Central Bank of Iraq and Customs Commission), Construction, Housing and Municipalities, Culture, Tourism and Antiques, Communication, Transportation, Environment and the National Investment Commission.
UNCTAD support to Iraq aims, ultimately, at developing and upgrading national trade-related capacity, strengthening the national ownership of the development strategy and priorities of Iraq. Its accession bid should be construed as part of the government’s strive for peaceful society, stability, development sustainability and inclusiveness.
