The Study On WTO Secretariat

As Marrakesh Agreement Establishing World Trade organization stipulated, The WTO secretariat is a standing body of WTO. At a legal text angle, the secretariat is just a daily ministrant organ, without any decision-making power on the multilateral trade affairs. The WTO secretariat and Director-General are on behalf of the multilateral trade, but not any one of the members of WTO. After the WTO was established, during more than 10 years, the WTO secretariat not only makes good effort for the function of WTO, but also plays an important role in the multilateral trade system. This paper attempts to study on the WTO secretariat more thoroughly and systemically by historical and comparative methods. The author expects the study can help us to understand the WTO secretariat more profoundly and comprehensively about its status ,function, history, actuality, limitation and reformation.The paper can be divided into 4 chapters: The first chapter discusses the secretariat of modern international Organizations in general significance. The author firstly analyses some basic aspects about the modern International Organizations, that is to say, the concept, the character, the function and so on. Then the author introduces some important interrelated secretariats of international organization. The second chapter discusses the historical role of WTO secretariat in the multilateral trade system. The author thinks the evolution of WTO secretariat is the result of the evolution of multilateral trade system itself. The author firstly reviews the historical evolution of WTO secretariat. Then the author analyses the historical role of WTO secretariat in the multilateral trade system in two main aspects: the GATT/WTO Secretariat and the multilateral free trade, the GATT/WTO Secretariat and the development of global trade. The third chapter comparatively analyses the function of the WTO Secretariat. The author firstly analyses the function of the WTO Secretariat and Director-General in detail. Then the author compares the WTO Secretariat with other four representative Secretariats of international organizations, and gives a brief conclusion. The last chapter describes the best state of the reformation of WTO Secretariat. The author firstly analyses the limitation of actual system of WTO Secretariat and Director-General, then gives some suggestion on the reformation and expect the future.