Name	World Trade Organization Organisation mondiale du commerce Organización Mundial del Comercio
Map	WTO members.svg
Mcaption
Headquarters	Centre William Rappard, Geneva, Switzerland
Head	Pascal Lamy (Director-General)
Membership	153 member states
Language	English, French, Spanish
Leader title	Director-General
Leader name	Pascal Lamy
Formation	January 1, 1995
Budget	189 million Swiss francs (approx. 182 million USD) in 2009.
Num staff	625
Website	wto.org }}

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an organization that intends to supervise and liberalize international trade. The organization officially commenced on January 1, 1995 under the Marrakech Agreement, replacing the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which commenced in 1948. The organization deals with regulation of trade between participating countries; it provides a framework for negotiating and formalizing trade agreements, and a dispute resolution process aimed at enforcing participants' adherence to WTO agreements which are signed by representatives of member governments and ratified by their parliaments. Most of the issues that the WTO focuses on derive from previous trade negotiations, especially from the Uruguay Round (1986–1994).

The organization is currently endeavoring to persist with a trade negotiation called the Doha Development Agenda (or Doha Round), which was launched in 2001 to enhance equitable participation of poorer countries which represent a majority of the world's population. However, the negotiation has been dogged by "disagreement between exporters of agricultural bulk commodities and countries with large numbers of subsistence farmers on the precise terms of a 'special safeguard measure' to protect farmers from surges in imports. At this time, the future of the Doha Round is uncertain."

The WTO has 153 members, representing more than 97% of the world's population, and 30 observers, most seeking membership. The WTO is governed by a ministerial conference, meeting every two years; a general council, which implements the conference's policy decisions and is responsible for day-to-day administration; and a director-general, who is appointed by the ministerial conference. The WTO's headquarters is at the Centre William Rappard, Geneva, Switzerland.

History

The WTO's predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), was established after World War II in the wake of other new multilateral institutions dedicated to international economic cooperation — notably the Bretton Woods institutions known as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. A comparable international institution for trade, named the International Trade Organization was successfully negotiated. The ITO was to be a United Nations specialized agency and would address not only trade barriers but other issues indirectly related to trade, including employment, investment, restrictive business practices, and commodity agreements. But the ITO treaty was not approved by the U.S. and a few other signatories and never went into effect.

In the absence of an international organization for trade, the GATT would over the years "transform itself" into a ''de facto'' international organization.

GATT rounds of negotiations

The GATT was the only multilateral instrument governing international trade from 1945 until the WTO was established in 1995. Despite attempts in the mid 1950s and 1960s to create some form of institutional mechanism for international trade, the GATT continued to operate for almost half a century as a semi-institutionalized multilateral treaty regime on a provisional basis.

From Geneva to Tokyo

Seven rounds of negotiations occurred under GATT. The first real GATT trade rounds concentrated on further reducing tariffs. Then, the Kennedy Round in the mid-sixties brought about a GATT anti-dumping Agreement and a section on development. The Tokyo Round during the seventies was the first major attempt to tackle trade barriers that do not take the form of tariffs, and to improve the system, adopting a series of agreements on non-tariff barriers, which in some cases interpreted existing GATT rules, and in others broke entirely new ground. Because these plurilateral agreements were not accepted by the full GATT membership, they were often informally called "codes". Several of these codes were amended in the Uruguay Round, and turned into multilateral commitments accepted by all WTO members. Only four remained plurilateral (those on government procurement, bovine meat, civil aircraft and dairy products), but in 1997 WTO members agreed to terminate the bovine meat and dairy agreements, leaving only two.

Uruguay Round

Well before GATT's 40th anniversary, its members concluded that the GATT system was straining to adapt to a new globalizing world economy. In response to the problems identified in the 1982 Ministerial Declaration (structural deficiencies, spill-over impacts of certain countries' policies on world trade GATT could not manage etc.), the eighth GATT round — known as the Uruguay Round — was launched in September 1986, in Punta del Este, Uruguay.

It was the biggest negotiating mandate on trade ever agreed: the talks were going to extend the trading system into several new areas, notably trade in services and intellectual property, and to reform trade in the sensitive sectors of agriculture and textiles; all the original GATT articles were up for review. The Final Act concluding the Uruguay Round and officially establishing the WTO regime was signed April 15, 1994, during the ministerial meeting at Marrakesh, Morocco, and hence is known as the Marrakesh Agreement.

The GATT still exists as the WTO's umbrella treaty for trade in goods, updated as a result of the Uruguay Round negotiations (a distinction is made between ''GATT 1994'', the updated parts of GATT, and ''GATT 1947'', the original agreement which is still the heart of GATT 1994). GATT 1994 is not however the only legally binding agreement included via the Final Act at Marrakesh; a long list of about 60 agreements, annexes, decisions and understandings was adopted. The agreements fall into a structure with six main parts:

The Agreement Establishing the WTO

Goods and investment — the Multilateral Agreements on Trade in Goods including the GATT 1994 and the Trade Related Investment Measures

Services — the General Agreement on Trade in Services

Intellectual property — the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS)

Dispute settlement (DSU)

Reviews of governments' trade policies (TPRM)

Ministerial conferences

The topmost decision-making body of the WTO is the Ministerial Conference, which usually meets every two years. It brings together all members of the WTO, all of which are countries or customs unions. The Ministerial Conference can take decisions on all matters under any of the multilateral trade agreements. The inaugural ministerial conference was held in Singapore in 1996. Disagreements between largely developed and developing economies emerged during this conference over four issues initiated by this conference, which led to them being collectively referred to as the "Singapore issues". The second ministerial conference was held in Geneva in Switzerland. The third conference in Seattle, Washington ended in failure, with massive demonstrations and police and National Guard crowd control efforts drawing worldwide attention. The fourth ministerial conference was held in Doha in the Persian Gulf nation of Qatar. The Doha Development Round was launched at the conference. The conference also approved the joining of China, which became the 143rd member to join. The fifth ministerial conference was held in Cancún, Mexico, aiming at forging agreement on the Doha round. An alliance of 22 southern states, the G20 developing nations (led by India, China, Brazil, ASEAN led by the Philippines), resisted demands from the North for agreements on the so-called "Singapore issues" and called for an end to agricultural subsidies within the EU and the US. The talks broke down without progress.

The sixth WTO ministerial conference was held in Hong Kong from 13–18 December 2005. It was considered vital if the four-year-old Doha Development Agenda negotiations were to move forward sufficiently to conclude the round in 2006. In this meeting, countries agreed to phase out all their agricultural export subsidies by the end of 2013, and terminate any cotton export subsidies by the end of 2006. Further concessions to developing countries included an agreement to introduce duty free, tariff free access for goods from the Least Developed Countries, following the Everything but Arms initiative of the European Union — but with up to 3% of tariff lines exempted. Other major issues were left for further negotiation to be completed by the end of 2010. The WTO General Council, on 26 May 2009, agreed to hold a seventh WTO ministerial conference session in Geneva from 30 November-3 December 2009. A statement by chairman Amb. Mario Matus acknowledged that the prime purpose was to remedy a breach of protocol requiring two-yearly "regular" meetings, which had lapsed with the Doha Round failure in 2005, and that the "scaled-down" meeting would not be a negotiating session, but "emphasis will be on transparency and open discussion rather than on small group processes and informal negotiating structures". The general theme for discussion was "The WTO, the Multilateral Trading System and the Current Global Economic Environment"

Doha Round

The WTO launched the current round of negotiations, the Doha Development Agenda (DDA) or Doha Round, at the fourth ministerial conference in Doha, Qatar in November 2001. The Doha round was to be an ambitious effort to make globalization more inclusive and help the world's poor, particularly by slashing barriers and subsidies in farming. The initial agenda comprised both further trade liberalization and new rule-making, underpinned by commitments to strengthen substantial assistance to developing countries.

The negotiations have been highly contentious and agreement has not been reached, despite the intense negotiations at several ministerial conferences and at other sessions. Disagreements still continue over several key areas including agriculture subsidies.

Functions

Among the various functions of the WTO, these are regarded by analysts as the most important: It oversees the implementation, administration and operation of the covered agreements. It provides a forum for negotiations and for settling disputes. Additionally, it is the WTO's duty to review and propagate the national trade policies, and to ensure the coherence and transparency of trade policies through surveillance in global economic policy-making. Another priority of the WTO is the assistance of developing, least-developed and low-income countries in transition to adjust to WTO rules and disciplines through technical cooperation and training.

The WTO is also a center of economic research and analysis: regular assessments of the global trade picture in its annual publications and research reports on specific topics are produced by the organization. Finally, the WTO cooperates closely with the two other components of the Bretton Woods system, the IMF and the World Bank.

Principles of the trading system

The WTO establishes a framework for trade policies; it does not define or specify outcomes. That is, it is concerned with setting the rules of the trade policy games. Five principles are of particular importance in understanding both the pre-1994 GATT and the WTO: #Non-Discrimination. It has two major components: the most favoured nation (MFN) rule, and the national treatment policy. Both are embedded in the main WTO rules on goods, services, and intellectual property, but their precise scope and nature differ across these areas. The MFN rule requires that a WTO member must apply the same conditions on all trade with other WTO members, i.e. a WTO member has to grant the most favorable conditions under which it allows trade in a certain product type to all other WTO members. "Grant someone a special favour and you have to do the same for all other WTO members." National treatment means that imported goods should be treated no less favorably than domestically produced goods (at least after the foreign goods have entered the market) and was introduced to tackle non-tariff barriers to trade (e.g. technical standards, security standards et al. discriminating against imported goods). #Reciprocity. It reflects both a desire to limit the scope of free-riding that may arise because of the MFN rule, and a desire to obtain better access to foreign markets. A related point is that for a nation to negotiate, it is necessary that the gain from doing so be greater than the gain available from unilateral liberalization; reciprocal concessions intend to ensure that such gains will materialise. #Binding and enforceable commitments. The tariff commitments made by WTO members in a multilateral trade negotiation and on accession are enumerated in a schedule (list) of concessions. These schedules establish "ceiling bindings": a country can change its bindings, but only after negotiating with its trading partners, which could mean compensating them for loss of trade. If satisfaction is not obtained, the complaining country may invoke the WTO dispute settlement procedures. #Transparency. The WTO members are required to publish their trade regulations, to maintain institutions allowing for the review of administrative decisions affecting trade, to respond to requests for information by other members, and to notify changes in trade policies to the WTO. These internal transparency requirements are supplemented and facilitated by periodic country-specific reports (trade policy reviews) through the Trade Policy Review Mechanism (TPRM). The WTO system tries also to improve predictability and stability, discouraging the use of quotas and other measures used to set limits on quantities of imports. #Safety valves. In specific circumstances, governments are able to restrict trade. There are three types of provisions in this direction: articles allowing for the use of trade measures to attain noneconomic objectives; articles aimed at ensuring "fair competition"; and provisions permitting intervention in trade for economic reasons. Exceptions to the MFN principle also allow for preferential treatment of developed countries, regional free trade areas and customs unions.

Organizational structure

The General Council has multiple bodies which oversee committees in different areas, re the following:

;Council for Trade in Goods: There are 11 committees under the jurisdiction of the Goods Council each with a specific task. All members of the WTO participate in the committees. The Textiles Monitoring Body is separate from the other committees but still under the jurisdiction of Goods Council. The body has its own chairman and only 10 members. The body also has several groups relating to textiles.

;Council for Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights: Information on intellectual property in the WTO, news and official records of the activities of the TRIPS Council, and details of the WTO’s work with other international organizations in the field.

;Council for Trade in Services: The Council for Trade in Services operates under the guidance of the General Council and is responsible for overseeing the functioning of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). It is open to all WTO members, and can create subsidiary bodies as required.

;Trade Negotiations Committee: The Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC) is the committee that deals with the current trade talks round. The chair is WTO’s director-general. The committee is currently tasked with the Doha Development Round.

The Service Council has three subsidiary bodies: financial services, domestic regulations, GATS rules and specific commitments. The General council has several different committees, working groups, and working parties. There are committees on the following: Trade and Environment; Trade and Development (Subcommittee on Least-Developed Countries); Regional Trade Agreements; Balance of Payments Restrictions; and Budget, Finance and Administration. There are working parties on the following: Accession. There are working groups on the following: Trade, debt and finance; and Trade and technology transfer.

Voting system

The WTO operates on a ''one country, one vote'' system, but actual votes have never been taken. Decision making is generally by consensus, and relative market size is the primary source of bargaining power. The advantage of consensus decision-making is that it encourages efforts to find the most widely acceptable decision. Main disadvantages include large time requirements and many rounds of negotiation to develop a consensus decision, and the tendency for final agreements to use ambiguous language on contentious points that makes future interpretation of treaties difficult.

In reality, WTO negotiations proceed not by consensus of all members, but by a process of informal negotiations between small groups of countries. Such negotiations are often called "Green Room" negotiations (after the colour of the WTO Director-General's Office in Geneva), or "Mini-Ministerials", when they occur in other countries. These processes have been regularly criticised by many of the WTO's developing country members which are often totally excluded from the negotiations.

Richard Harold Steinberg (2002) argues that although the WTO's consensus governance model provides law-based initial bargaining, trading rounds close through power-based bargaining favouring Europe and the U.S., and may not lead to Pareto improvement.

Dispute settlement

In 1994, the WTO members agreed on the Understanding on Rules and Procedures Governing the Settlement of Disputes (DSU) annexed to the "Final Act" signed in Marrakesh in 1994. Dispute settlement is regarded by the WTO as the central pillar of the multilateral trading system, and as a "unique contribution to the stability of the global economy". WTO members have agreed that, if they believe fellow-members are violating trade rules, they will use the multilateral system of settling disputes instead of taking action unilaterally.

The operation of the WTO dispute settlement process involves the DSB panels, the Appellate Body, the WTO Secretariat, arbitrators, independent experts and several specialized institutions. Bodies involved in the dispute settlement process, World Trade Organization.

Accession and membership

The process of becoming a WTO member is unique to each applicant country, and the terms of accession are dependent upon the country's stage of economic development and current trade regime. The process takes about five years, on average, but it can last more if the country is less than fully committed to the process or if political issues interfere. As is typical of WTO procedures, an offer of accession is only given once consensus is reached among interested parties.

Accession process

A country wishing to accede to the WTO submits an application to the General Council, and has to describe all aspects of its trade and economic policies that have a bearing on WTO agreements. The application is submitted to the WTO in a memorandum which is examined by a working party open to all interested WTO Members.

After all necessary background information has been acquired, the working party focuses on issues of discrepancy between the WTO rules and the applicant's international and domestic trade policies and laws. The working party determines the terms and conditions of entry into the WTO for the applicant nation, and may consider transitional periods to allow countries some leeway in complying with the WTO rules.

The final phase of accession involves bilateral negotiations between the applicant nation and other working party members regarding the concessions and commitments on tariff levels and market access for goods and services. The new member's commitments are to apply equally to all WTO members under normal non-discrimination rules, even though they are negotiated bilaterally.

When the bilateral talks conclude, the working party sends to the general council or ministerial conference an accession package, which includes a summary of all the working party meetings, the Protocol of Accession (a draft membership treaty), and lists ("schedules") of the member-to-be's commitments. Once the general council or ministerial conference approves of the terms of accession, the applicant's parliament must ratify the Protocol of Accession before it can become a member.

Members and observers

The WTO has 153 members (almost all of the 123 nations participating in the Uruguay Round signed on at its foundation, and the rest had to get membership). The 27 states of the European Union are represented also as the European Communities. WTO members do not have to be full sovereign nation-members. Instead, they must be a customs territory with full autonomy in the conduct of their external commercial relations. Thus Hong Kong (as "Hong Kong, China" since 1997) became a GATT contracting party, and the Republic of China (ROC) (commonly known as Taiwan, whose sovereignty has been disputed by the People's Republic of China or ''PRC'') acceded to the WTO in 2002 under the name of "Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu" (Chinese Taipei). The WTO Secretariat omits the official titles (such as Counselor, First Secretary, Second Secretary and Third Secretary) of the members of Chinese Taipei's Permanent Mission to the WTO, except for the titles of the Permanent Representative and Deputy Permanent Representative.

A number of non-members (30) are observers at WTO proceedings and are currently negotiating their membership. The full list of WTO observers are: 1. Afghanistan 2. Algeria 3. Andorra 4. Azerbaijan 5. The Bahamas 6. Belarus 7. Bhutan 8. Bosnia and Herzegovina 9. Comoros 10. Equatorial Guinea 11. Ethiopia 12. Islamic Republic of Iran 13. Iraq 14. Kazakhstan 15. Lao People's Democratic Republic, or Laos 16. Lebanese Republic 17. Liberia 18. Libyan Arab Jamahiriya 19. Montenegro 20. Russian Federation 21. Samoa 22. Sao Tomé and Principe 23. Serbia 24. Seychelles 25. Sudan 26. Syrian Arab Republic 27. Tajikistan 28. Uzbekistan 29. Vanuatu 30. Yemen

Russia is the biggest economy outside WTO and after the completion of Russia's accession, Iran would be the biggest economy outside the WTO. With the exception of the Holy See, observers must start accession negotiations within five years of becoming observers. Some international intergovernmental organizations are also granted observer status to WTO bodies. 14 states and 2 territories so far have no official interaction with the WTO.

Agreements

The WTO oversees about 60 different agreements which have the status of international legal texts. Member countries must sign and ratify all WTO agreements on accession. A discussion of some of the most important agreements follows. The Agreement on Agriculture came into effect with the establishment of the WTO at the beginning of 1995. The AoA has three central concepts, or "pillars": domestic support, market access and export subsidies. The General Agreement on Trade in Services was created to extend the multilateral trading system to service sector, in the same way the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) provides such a system for merchandise trade. The Agreement entered into force in January 1995. The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights sets down minimum standards for many forms of intellectual property (IP) regulation. It was negotiated at the end of the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1994.

The Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures — also known as the SPS Agreement was negotiated during the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and entered into force with the establishment of the WTO at the beginning of 1995. Under the SPS agreement, the WTO sets constraints on members' policies relating to food safety (bacterial contaminants, pesticides, inspection and labelling) as well as animal and plant health (imported pests and diseases). The Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade is an international treaty of the World Trade Organization. It was negotiated during the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and entered into force with the establishment of the WTO at the end of 1994. The object ensures that technical negotiations and standards, as well as testing and certification procedures, do not create unnecessary obstacles to trade". The Agreement on Customs Valuation, formally known as the Agreement on Implementation of Article VII of GATT, prescribes methods of customs valuation that Members are to follow. Chiefly, it adopts the "transaction value" approach.

==Effectiveness==

Developing countries

Critics contend that smaller countries in the WTO wield little influence, and despite the WTO aim of helping the developing countries, the politicians representing the most influential nations in the WTO (and within those countries or between them, influential private business interests) focus on the commercial interests of profit-making companies rather than the interests of all.[citation needed] Martin Khor argues that the WTO does not manage the global economy impartially, but in its operation has a systematic bias toward rich countries and multinational corporations, harming smaller countries which have less negotiation power. Some examples of this bias are: Rich countries are able to maintain high import duties and quotas in certain products, blocking imports from developing countries (e.g. clothing); The increase in non-tariff barriers such as anti-dumping measures allowed against developing countries; The maintenance of high protection of agriculture in developed countries while developing ones are pressed to open their markets; Many developing countries do not have the capacity to follow the negotiations and participate actively in the Uruguay Round; and The TRIPs agreement which limits developing countries from utilizing some technology that originates from abroad in their local systems (including medicines and agricultural products). Khor argues that developing countries have not benefited from the WTO Agreements of the Uruguay Round, and, therefore, the credibility of the WTO trade system could be eroded. According to Khor, "one of the major categories of 'problems of implementation of the Uruguay Round' is the way the Northern countries have not lived up to the spirit of their commitments in implementing (or not implementing) their obligations agreed to in the various Agreements."[2] Khor also believes that the Doha Round negotiations "have veered from their proclaimed direction oriented to a development-friendly outcome, towards a 'market access' direction in which developing countries are pressurised to open up their agricultural, industrial and services sectors."[3] Jagdish Bhagwati asserts however that there is greater tariff protection on manufacturers in the poor countries, which are also overtaking the rich nations in the number of anti-dumping filings.[4] [edit]

Labour and environment

Other critics claim that the issues of labor and environment are steadfastly ignored. Steve Charnovitz, former Director of the Global Environment and Trade Study (GETS), believes that the WTO "should begin to address the link between trade and labor and environmental concerns." He also argues that "in the absence of proper environmental regulation and resource management, increased trade might cause so much adverse damage that the gains from trade would be less than the environmental costs."[5] Further, labor unions condemn the labor rights record of developing countries, arguing that to the extent the WTO succeeds at promoting globalization, then in equal measure do the environment and labor rights suffer.[6] On the other side, Khor responds that "if environment and labor were to enter the WTO system [...] it would be conceptually difficult to argue why other social and cultural issues should also not enter." He also argues that "trade measures have become a vehicle for big corporations and social organizations in promoting their interests."[7] Bhagwati is also critical towards "rich-country lobbies seeking on imposing their unrelated agendas on trade agreements." According to Bhagwati, these lobbies and especially the "rich charities have now turned to agitating about trade issues with much energy understanding."[8] Therefore, both Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya have criticized the introduction of TRIPs into the WTO framework, fearing that such non-trade agendas might overwhelm the organization's function. According to Panagariya, "taken in isolation, TRIPs resulted in reduced welfare for developing countries and the world as a whole."[9] Bhagwati asserts that "intellectual property does not belong in the WTO, since protecting it is simply a matter of royalty collection [...] The matter was forced onto the WTO's agenda during the Uruguay Round by the pharmaceutical and software industries, even though this risked turning the WTO into a glorified collection agency."[10] For a discussion on the incorporation of labor rights into the WTO, see The Recognition of Labour Standards within the World Trade Organization. [edit]

Decision making

Other critics have characterized the decision making in the WTO as over-simplified, ineffective, unrepresentative and non-inclusive; more active participants, representing more diverse interests and objectives, have complicated WTO decision-making, and the process of "consensus-building" has broken down. They argue that the GATT decision making worked in the past because there were fewer countries actively engaged and there was no compulsion for all countries to adhere to the results. They have thus proposed the establishment of a small, informal steering committee (a "consultative board") that can be delegated responsibility for developing consensus on trade issues among the member countries.[11] The Third World Network has called the WTO "the most non-transparent of international organisations", because "the vast majority of developing countries have very little real say in the WTO system".[12] Many non-governmental organizations, such as the World Federalist Movement, are calling for the creation of a WTO parliamentary assembly to allow for more democratic participation in WTO decision making.[13] Dr Caroline Lucas recommended that such an assembly "have a more prominent role to play in the form of parliamentary scrutiny, and also in the wider efforts to reform the WTO processes, and its rules".[14] However, Dr Raoul Marc Jennar argues that a consultative parliamentary assembly would be ineffective for the following reasons: It does not resolve the problem of "informal meetings" whereby industrialized countries negotiate the most important decisions; It does not reduce the de facto inequality which exists between countries with regards to an effective and efficient participation to all activities within all WTO bodies; It does not rectify the multiple violations of the general principles of law which affect the dispute settlement mechanism.[15] The lack of transparency is often seen as a problem for communism. Politicians can negotiate for regulations that would not be possible accepted in a democratic process in their own nations. "Some countries push for certain regulatory standards in international bodies and then bring those regulations home under the requirement of harmonization and the guise of multilateralism."[16] This is often referred to as Policy Laundering.

Future Alternative to Consensus Decision Making: Critical Mass

Critical mass decision making is a process in which sufficient number of parties that do not represent the entire membership agree upon a common course of cooperative action to be taken under the auspices of the WTO. Members may agree to negotiate a particular legal obligation provided that the main partners are included.

Directors-General

The Directors-General of the WTO have been:

Pascal Lamy, 2005–

Supachai Panitchpakdi, 2002–2005

Mike Moore, 1999–2002

Renato Ruggiero, 1995–1999

Peter Sutherland, 1995

The Directors-General of the precursor organization, GATT, were:

Peter Sutherland, 1993–1995

Arthur Dunkel, 1980–1993

Olivier Long, 1968–1980

Eric Wyndham White, 1948–1968

See also

Notes

External links

;Official WTO pages

Official WTO homepage

— Highlights of the first decade, Annual Report 2005 pages 116–166

*International Trade Centre — joint UN/WTO agency

;Government pages on the WTO

European Union position on the WTO

;Media pages on the WTO

World Trade Organization

BBC News — Profile: WTO

Guardian Unlimited — Special Report: The World Trade Organisation ongoing coverage

;Non-governmental organization pages on the WTO

Gatt.org — Parody of official WTO page by The Yes Men

Public Citizen

Transnational Institute: Beyond the WTO

* Category:International trade Category:International trade organizations Category:Organisations based in Geneva Category:Organizations established in 1995 Category:World government

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name	Errol Morris
birth date	February 05, 1948
birth place	Hewlett, New York, United States
occupation	Director
years active	1978–present
website	www.errolmorris.com
employer	}}

Errol Mark Morris (born February 5, 1948) is an American director. In 2003, ''The Guardian'' put him seventh in its list of the world's 40 best directors. In 2003, Morris won the Academy Award for his film ''The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara''.

Biography

Early life and education

Morris was born in Hewlett, New York on February 5, 1948. When he was two years old, his father died of a heart attack. His mother, a Juilliard graduate, supported Morris and his brother as a music teacher. Morris attended Hewlett Elementary School in a class with Brent Glass, Tony Kornheiser and former Village Voice editor David Schneiderman. In the 10th grade, Morris enrolled at the Putney School, a boarding school in Vermont. He began playing the cello, spending a summer in France studying music under the acclaimed Nadia Boulanger, who also taught Morris' future collaborator Philip Glass. Describing Morris as a teenager, Mark Singer wrote that he "read with a passion the forty-odd ''Oz'' books, watched a lot of television, and on a regular basis went with a doting but not quite right maiden aunt ("I guess you'd have to say that Aunt Roz was somewhat demented") to Saturday matinées, where he saw such films as ''This Island Earth'' and ''Creature from the Black Lagoon'' — horror movies that, viewed again 30 years later, still seem scary to him."

Morris attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison, graduating in 1969 with a B.A. in history. For a brief time Morris held small jobs, first as a cable television salesman and then as a term-paper writer. His unorthodox approach to applying for grad school included "trying to get accepted at different graduate schools just by showing up on their doorstep." Having unsuccessfully approached both the University of Oxford and Harvard University, Morris was able to talk his way into Princeton University, where he began studying the history of science, a topic in which he had "absolutely no background." His concentration was in the history of physics, and he was bored and unsuccessful in the prerequisite physics classes he had to take. This, together with his antagonistic relationship with his advisor Thomas Kuhn ("'You won't even look through my telescope.' And his response was 'Errol, it's not a telescope, it's a kaleidoscope.'") ensured that his stay at Princeton would be short. He left Princeton in 1972, enrolling at Berkeley as a Ph.D. student in philosophy. At Berkeley, Morris once again found that he was not well-suited to his subject. "Berkeley was just a world of pedants. It was truly shocking. I spent two or three years in the philosophy program. I have very bad feelings about it," he later said. He became a regular at the Pacific Film Archive, as Tom Luddy, the director of the archive at the time, later remembered: "He was a film noir nut. He claimed we weren't showing the real film noir. So I challenged him to write the program notes. Then, there was his habit of sneaking into the films and denying that he was sneaking in. I told him if he was sneaking in he should at least admit he was doing it."

Inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's film ''Psycho'', Morris visited Plainfield, Wisconsin in 1975. While in Wisconsin, he conducted multiple interviews with Ed Gein, the infamous serial killer who was a resident at Mendota State Hospital in Madison. He later made plans with German film director Werner Herzog, whom Tom Luddy had introduced to Morris, to return in the summer of 1975 to secretly open the grave of Gein's mother to test their theory that Gein himself had already dug her up. Herzog arrived on schedule, but Morris had second thoughts and was not there. Herzog did not open the grave. Morris later returned to Plainfield, this time staying for almost a year, conducting hundreds of hours of interviews. Although he had plans to either write a book or make a film (which he would call ''Digging up the Past''), Morris never completed his Ed Gein project. In the fall of 1976, Herzog visited Plainfield again, this time to shoot part of his film ''Stroszek''. After the shooting finished, Herzog handed Morris an envelope full of cash. Morris walked over to the motel window and tossed the envelope out the window into a parking lot. Herzog went out to the parking lot and brought the money back, again offering it to Morris, saying, "Please don't do that again." Morris accepted the $2,000 and used it to take a trip to Vernon, Florida. Vernon was nicknamed Nub City because its residents participated in a particularly gruesome form of insurance fraud in which they deliberately amputated a limb in order to collect the insurance money. "In the hierarchy of nubbiedom, the supremely rewarding self-sacrifice was the loss of a right leg and a left arm, because, so the theory went, 'afterward, you could still write your name and still have a foot to press the gas pedal of your Cadillac.'" Morris's second documentary would be about the town and bear its name, although it makes no mention of Vernon as Nub City, but instead explores other idiosyncrasies of the town's residents. Morris made this omission because he received death threats while doing research; the town's residents were afraid that Morris would reveal their secret.

After spending two weeks in Vernon, Morris returned to Berkeley and began working on a script for a work of fiction that he called ''Nub City''. After a few unproductive months, he happened to read a headline in the ''San Francisco Chronicle'' that read, "450 DEAD PETS GOING TO NAPA VALLEY". Morris left for Napa Valley and began working on the film that would become his first feature, ''Gates of Heaven''. In 1978 when the film premiered, Werner Herzog cooked and publicly ate his shoe, an event later incorporated into a short documentary by Les Blank. Herzog had promised to eat his shoe if Morris completed the project, to challenge and encourage Morris, whom Herzog perceived as incapable of following up on the projects he conceived. At the public shoe-eating, Herzog suggested that he hoped the act would serve to encourage anyone having difficulty bringing a project to fruition.

Early career

''Gates of Heaven'' was given a limited release in the spring of 1981. Critic Roger Ebert was and remains today a champion of the film, including it on his all-time top ten best films list. Morris returned to Vernon in 1979 and again in 1980, renting a house in town and conducting interviews with the town's citizens. ''Vernon, FL'' premiered at the 1981 New York Film Festival. ''Newsweek'' called it, "a film as odd and mysterious as its subjects, and quite unforgettable." The film, like ''Gates of Heaven'', suffered from poor distribution. It was released on video in 1987, and DVD in 2005.

After finishing ''Vernon, FL'', Morris tried unsuccessfully to get funding for a variety of projects. There was ''Road'', a story about an interstate highway in Minnesota; a project about Robert Golka, the creator of laser-induced fireballs in Utah; and the story of Centralia, Pennsylvania, the coal town in which an "inextinguishable subterranean fire" ignited in 1962. He eventually got funding in 1983 to write a script about John and Jim Pardue, a pair of Missouri bank robbers who had killed their father and grandmother and robbed five banks. Morris's pitch went, "The great bank-robbery sprees always take place at a time when something is going wrong in the country. Bonnie and Clyde were apolitical, but it's impossible to imagine them without the Depression as a back-drop. The Pardue brothers were apolitical, but it's impossible to imagine them without Vietnam." Morris wanted Tom Waits and Mickey Rourke to play the brothers, and he wrote the script, but the project eventually failed. Morris worked on writing scripts for various other projects, including a pair of ill-fated Stephen King adaptations.

In 1984 he married Julia Sheehan, whom he had met in Wisconsin while researching Ed Gein and other serial killers. Morris would later recall an early conversation with Julia: "I was talking to a mass murderer but I was thinking of you," he said, and instantly regretted it, afraid that it might not have sounded as affectionate as he had wished. But Julia was actually flattered: "I thought, really, that was one of the nicest things anyone ever said to me. It was hard to go out with other guys after that."

In 1985, Morris became interested in Dr. James Grigson, a psychiatrist in Dallas. Under Texas law, the death penalty can only be issued if the jury is convinced that the defendant is not only guilty, but will commit further violent crimes in the future if he is not put to death. Grigson had spent 15 years testifying for such cases, and he almost invariably gave the same damning testimony, often saying that it is "one hundred per cent certain" that the defendant would kill again. This led to Grigson being nicknamed "Dr. Death". Through Grigson, Morris would meet the subject of his next film, 36 year-old Randall Dale Adams.

Adams was serving a life sentence that had been commuted from a death sentence on a legal technicality for the 1976 murder of Robert Wood, a Dallas police officer. Adams told Morris that he had been framed, and that David Harris, who was present at the time of the murder and was the principal witness for the prosecution, had in fact killed Wood. Morris began researching the case because it related to Dr. Grigson; he was at first unconvinced of Adams's innocence. After reading the transcripts of the trial and meeting David Harris at a bar, however, Morris was no longer so sure.

At the time, Morris had been making a living as a private investigator for a well-known private detective agency that specialized in Wall Street cases. Bringing together his talents as an investigator and his obsessions with murder, narration and epistemology, Morris went to work on the case in earnest. Unedited interviews in which the prosecution's witnesses systematically contradicted themselves were used as testimony in Adams's 1986 habeas corpus hearing to determine if he would receive a new trial. David Harris famously confessed, in a roundabout manner, to killing Wood. Although Adams was finally found innocent after years of being processed by the legal system, the judge in the habeas corpus hearing officially stated that, "much could be said about those videotape interviews, but nothing that would have any bearing on the matter before this court." Regardless, ''The Thin Blue Line'', as Morris's film would be called, was popularly accepted as the main force behind getting its subject, Randall Adams, out of prison. As Morris said of the film, "''The Thin Blue Line'' is two movies grafted together. On one simple level is the question, Did he do it, or didn’t he? And on another level, ''The Thin Blue Line'', properly considered, is an essay on false history. A whole group of people, literally everyone, believed a version of the world that was entirely wrong, and my accidental investigation of the story provided a different version of what happened."

According to a survey by ''The Washington Post'', ''The Thin Blue Line'' made dozens of critics' top ten lists for 1988, more than any other film that year. It won the documentary of the year award from both the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics. Despite its widespread acclaim, it was not nominated for an Oscar, which created a small scandal regarding the nomination practices of the Academy. The Academy cited the film's genre of "non-fiction", arguing that it was not actually a documentary. To this day, ''The Thin Blue Line'' is one of the most critically acclaimed documentaries ever made.

2000s

Although Morris has achieved fame as a documentary filmmaker, he is also an accomplished director of television commercials. In 2002, Morris directed a series of television ads for Apple Computer as part of a popular "Switch" campaign. The commercials featured ex-Windows users discussing their various bad experiences that motivated their own personal switches to Macintosh. One commercial in the series, starring a high-school friend of his son Hamilton Morris, named Ellen Feiss, became an Internet fad. Morris has directed hundreds of commercials for various companies and products, including Adidas, AIG, Cisco Systems, Citibank, Kimberly-Clark's Depend brand, Levi's, Miller High Life, Nike, PBS, The Quaker Oats Company, Southern Comfort, EA Sports, Toyota and Volkswagen. Many of these commercials are available on his website.

In 2002, Morris was commissioned to make a short film for the 75th Academy Awards. He was hired based on his advertising resume, not his career as a director of feature-length documentaries. Those interviewed ranged from Laura Bush to Iggy Pop to Kenneth Arrow to Morris's 15 year old son Hamilton Morris . Morris was nominated for an Emmy for this short film. He considered editing this footage into a feature length film, focusing specifically on Donald Trump discussing ''Citizen Kane'' (This segment was later released on the second issue of Wholphin). Morris went on to make a second short for the 79th Academy Awards in 2007, this time interviewing the various nominees and asking them about their Oscar experiences.

In July 2004, Morris directed another series of commercials in the style of the "Switch" ads. This campaign featured Republicans who voted for Bush in the 2000 election giving their personal reasons for voting for Kerry in 2004. Upon completing more than 50 commercials, Morris had difficulty getting them on the air. Eventually the liberal advocacy group MoveOn PAC paid to air a few of the commercials. Morris eventually wrote an editorial for ''the New York Times'' discussing the commercials and Kerry's losing campaign.

In the fall of 2004, Morris also directed a series of noteworthy commercials for Sharp Electronics. The commercials enigmatically depicted various scenes from what appeared to be a short narrative that climaxed with a car crashing into a swimming pool. Each commercial showed a slightly different perspective on the events, and each ended with a cryptic weblink. The weblink was to a fake webpage advertising a prize offered to anyone who could discover the secret location of some valuable urns. It was in fact an alternate reality game. The original commercials can be found on Morris's website.

Morris also directed a series of spots for Reebok that featured rapper 50 Cent. The spots featured a title design by The Wilderness.

In 2004, Morris won the Best Documentary Oscar at the Academy Awards, for his film The Fog of War, about the career of Robert S. MacNamara, who was famous for having been the Secretary of Defense who had led the nation into the Vietnam War under Presidents John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, and who was also crucially involved in having helped President Kennedy avoid a Third World War over the issue of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. In the hauntingly re-enacted opening portion of the film concerning the background that MacNamara and his pro-nuclear-war adversary U.S. General Curtis LeMay had shared together during World War II, director Morris brought out complexities in the character of MacNamara, which the public had not previously recognized, but which largely shaped MacNamara's positions regarding both the missiles-in-Cuba issue and the Vietnam War issue, and which therefore created the historical figure that MacNamara turned out to be as the U.S. Secretary of Defense. In this documentary, Morris brought to a pinnacle the revolutionary technique that he had first introduced to the world in his 1988 The Thin Blue Line: the use of re-enactments in a documentary film -- a technique (re-enactments) which had previously been thought to be inappropriate for use in a "documentary" film. However, by now, in 2004, the use of re-enactments in a documentary had become accepted by critics, and therefore this time around, Morris finally won the Academy Award that he should earlier have won also for his The Thin Blue Line, which had actually revolutionized documentary filmmaking.

In early 2010, a new Morris documentary had been submitted to several film festivals, including Toronto International Film Festival, Cannes Film Festival, and Telluride Film Festival. The film, titled ''Tabloid'', features interviews with Joyce McKinney, a former Miss Wyoming, who was convicted ''in absentia'' for the kidnap and indecent assault of a Mormon missionary in England during 1977.

Additionally Morris has been writing long-form journalism exploring different areas of his interest, published on the New York Times website. A collection of these essays, entitled ''Believing is Seeing: Observations on the Mysteries of Photography,'' will be published by Penguin Press on September 1, 2011.

The Interrotron

The Interrotron is a device similar to a teleprompter: Errol and his subject each sit facing a camera. The image of each person's face is then projected onto a two-way mirror positioned in front of the lens of the other's camera. Instead of looking at a blank lens, then, both Morris and his subject are looking directly at a human face. (Diagram) Morris believes that the machine helps to explore the relationship between "monologue and language, and how people present themselves to camera, and express themselves to camera."

The name "Interrotron" was coined by Morris's wife, who, according to Morris, "liked the name because it combined two important concepts — terror and interview."

Filmography

''Gates of Heaven'' (1978)

''Vernon, Florida'' (1981)

''The Thin Blue Line'' (1988)

''The Dark Wind'' (1991)

''A Brief History of Time'' (1991)

''Fast, Cheap and Out of Control'' (1997)

''Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.'' (1999)

''First Person'' (2000)

''The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara'' (2003)

''Standard Operating Procedure'' (2008)

''Tabloid'' (2010)

Writing

"Will The ''Real'' Hooded Man Please Stand Up" (2007)

"Which Came First, The Chicken or the Egg?" (2007)

"Cartesian Blogging, Part One" (2007)

"Play It Again, Sam (Re-Enactments, Part One)" (2008)

"Play It Again, Sam (Re-Enactments, Part Two)" (2008)

"The Most Curious Thing" (2008)

"Cartesian Blogging, Part Two" (2008)

"People in the Middle" (2008)

"Photography as a Weapon" (2008)

"Cartesian Blogging, Part Three" (2008)

"Mirror, Mirror on the Wall" (2009)

"Whose Father Was He?" (2009)

"Bamboozling Ourselves" (2009)

"Seven Lies About Lying" (2009)

"The Case of the Inappropriate Alarm Clock" (2009)

"The Anosognosic's Dilemma: Something's Wrong but You'll Never Know What It Is" (2010)

"The Ashtray" (2011)

Awards and honors

Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2007)

Jury Grand Prix Silver Bear at the 2008 Berlin Film Festival for ''Standard Operating Procedure''

Academy Award for Documentary Feature ''The Fog of War'' (2004)

Best Documentary of the Year awards for ''The Fog of War'' (2003): the National Board of Review, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the Chicago Film Critics, and the Washington D.C. Area Film Critics.

2002 International Documentary Association list of the 20 all-time best documentaries: ''The Thin Blue Line'' (#2), ''Fast, Cheap & Out of Control'' (#14)

Emmy for Best Commercial for PBS commercial "Photobooth" (2001)

In December 2001, the United States' National Film Preservation Foundation announced that Morris's ''The Thin Blue Line'' would be one of the 25 films selected that year for preservation in the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress, bringing the total at the time to 325.

MacArthur Fellowship (1989)

Washington Post Best Film of the Year for ''The Thin Blue Line'' (1988)

New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics Best Documentary for ''The Thin Blue Line'' (1988)

Golden Horse for Best Foreign Film at the Taiwan International Film Festival for ''The Thin Blue Line'' (1988)

Edgar Award for Best Motion Picture, from the Mystery Writers of America, for ''The Thin Blue Line'' (1989)

''Gates of Heaven'' (1978) has long been on Roger Ebert's list of the ten greatest films ever made.

References

External links

Errol Morris's website

Errol Morris at Rotten Tomatoes)

Errol Morris (Jonathan Crow, Allmovie)

Errol Morris (Nina Rehfeld, GreenCine)

''Voices on Antisemitism'' Interview with Errol Morris from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Werner Herzog in coversation with Errol Morris (''The Believer'')

Category:1948 births Category:American documentary filmmakers Category:American film directors Category:Living people Category:MacArthur Fellows Category:Edgar Award winners Category:San Francisco Art Institute alumni Category:Documentary film directors Category:People from Hempstead (town), New York Category:Apple Inc. advertising Category:Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Category:University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni

de:Errol Morris fr:Errol Morris it:Errol Morris pt:Errol Morris ru:Моррис, Эррол fi:Errol Morris sv:Errol Morris zh:埃洛·莫里斯