Las disposiciones sobre trato especial y diferenciado a favor de los países en desarrollo en el entendimiento de solución de diferencias de la OMC1/The Provisions on Special and Differential Treatment in favor of Developing Countries in the WTO Dispute Settlement Understanding/Les dispositions relatives au traitement spécial et différencié pour les pays en développement dans le Mémorandum d'Accord pour le Règlement des Différends de l'OMC

The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), that regulates trade between sovereign States since 1948, had a dispute settlement mechanism that became insufficient to meet the needs of developing countries, which barely made use of it in nearly five decades. For this reason, this mechanism was amended during the Uruguay Round of the GATT, giving as a result the WTO Dispute Settlement System (DSS) as we know it today, covered in Annex 2 to the Agreement establishing the WTO, known also as the "Dispute Settlement Understanding" (DSU). This Understanding includes provisions on special and differential treatment for developing countries, and especially, for least developed countries (LDCs), with the aim of balancing the existing inequalities between these countries and the developed members of the WTO and to enable the former to effectively use the system to defend their commercial interests. However, most of these provisions suffer from shortcomings which make them ineffective and whose revision and modification become urgent in order for them to serve the purpose for which they are created. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]