STWR - Share The World's Resources

The collapse of WTO talks has brought the problems of the international trade system to the surface. It is now time to overhaul a 'free trade' system that protects corporate globalisation at the expense of poverty eradication and sustainability, says Myriam Vander Stichele.

The WTO talks actually collapsed because the US did not want to make any commitment to cut its massive subsidies to cotton growers – regardless of pushing cotton farmers in developing countries further into penury, writes Devinder Sharma.

After Doha, the WTO is now in a worse position than before, with the prospect that it will evolve like the old League of Nations in the 1930’s: present but powerless, argue Walden Bello and Mary Lou Malig.

The collapsed Doha Round has staved off a further import surge into the developing world - which would have been no less devastating than the trail of human destruction left behind by a powerful tsunami, argues Devinder Sharma.

With the collapse of the Doha round, disappointment is turning to recrimination. But what did poor countries have to gain anyway? By Raj Patel.

Liberalisation in world trade over recent decades has brought prosperity only to a minority of the world population, and without firmer guarantees many countries began to agree with the view that "no deal is better than a bad deal", writes David Loyn.