The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/all/20050405000924/http://www.wto.org:80/english/thewto_e/gcounc_e/gcounc_e.htm
Click here to return to homepage

español    français
../../../175pxls.gif (78 bytes)
 ON THIS PAGE:   News   Introduction   The mandate    Work
home > the wto > general council


Information about the organization

 The WTO General Council

The General Council is the WTO’s highest-level decision-making body in Geneva, meeting regularly to carry out the functions of the WTO. It has representatives (usually ambassadors or equivalent) from all member governments and has the authority to act on behalf of the ministerial conference which only meets about every two years. The current chairman is H.E. Ms. Amina Chawahir MOHAMED (Kenya).

The General Council also meets, under different rules, as the Dispute Settlement Body and as the Trade Policy Review Body.


See also:
 Click for Doha Development Agenda gateway
> Negotiations, implementation and development: the Doha agenda
> Ministerial conferences

  
> Annual Report of the DG to the General Council (Download in pdf format, 77 pages, 402KB)
News back to top

> See also Work of the General Council in the WTO, below

  
  
 Introduction back to top

Information about the General Council
Links to the General Council section of the WTO guide “Understanding the WTO”.

Technical information about the General Council
Links to the General Council section of the WTO training package

  
  
The mandate back to top

Agreement establishing the WTO — a summary
  
Browse or download the text of the “Download the text of the Agreement Establishing the WTO” from the legal texts gateway

   
   
Work of the General Council and official documents back to top

The General Council is entrusted with carrying out the functions of the WTO, and taking action necessary to this effect, in the intervals between meetings of the Ministerial Conference, in addition to carrying out the specific tasks assigned to it by the WTO Agreement.

> See also General Council news, above

  
Official documents of the General Council

Search Documents Online
General Council documents use the code WT/GC/* (where * takes additional values)
These links open a new window: allow a moment for the results to appear.

> help with downloading these documents

  • Annual reports of the General Council (Document code WT/GC/* and Annual reports)    > search
  • Minutes of the General Council meetings (Document code WT/GC/M/*)    > search
  • Working documents of the General Council (searches for document code WT/GC/W/*)
       > search

You can perform more sophisticated searches from the Documents Online search facility (opens in new window) by defining multiple search criteria such as document symbol (i.e. code number), full text search or document date.

contact us : World Trade Organization, rue de Lausanne 154, CH-1211 Geneva 21, Switzerland