ABSTRACT
The post-war evolution of the world trade regime reveals intersections with and parallels to the development of the United Nations and its agencies. In July of 2001, at the G8 summit in Genoa, Italy, amidst raging street battles with antiglobalization protesters, the most powerful trading nations in the world readily admitted that the poorest countries in the world, from Africa in particular, had yet to benefit from the world trade regime. In addition, it was conceded that more needed to be done to give exports from the developing world greater access to the markets of the developed world. These are some of the many admissions concerning the development of systems of global governance, as documented in Chapter 1, that demonstrate a bias in favor of the economically, politically and militarily more powerful nations of the Western world. This chapter develops the thesis further to highlight the tragic flaw within what is potentially the most powerful institution of global governance in the economic sphere, the World Trade Organization (WTO).
