South Centre Analytical Note - May 2002

BACKGROUND (excerpt)

By placing Special and Differential Treatment (hereafter referred to as ‘S&DT’) at the heart of the WTO Agreements, the Doha Ministerial Declaration explicitly acknowledged that S&DT is a fully accepted core principle in the WTO legal regime.

Special and Differential Treatment should not be understood as a set of concessions made in favour of developing countries -- and the objectives recalled in the preamble of the Doha Ministerial Declaration are clear about this-- but as a right that these countries acquired in order to have a chance of participating in the multilateral trading system.

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