As 2015 comes to a close, the parade of high-level events — from the third International Conference on Financing for Development in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to the United Nations General Assembly in New York and the just completed Paris climate change conference — wraps up with the World Trade Organization’s ministerial in Nairobi, Kenya, this week.
It’s a big year for the WTO — the ministerial will mark its 20th anniversary — and it comes at a time when mega-trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership and a growing number of regional or bilateral deals raise questions about the organization’s role in global trade.
For developing countries it could also be an opportunity to secure additional funding for trade assistance, and perhaps more importantly, try to find consensus around some thorny issues, including agricultural subsidies.