Suchergebnisse

With the developing world's increasing participation in the global trading system, food security has emerged as a mainstream issue and a potential deal-breaker in trade negotiations, as perceived in the recent Bali Ministerial Conference. While several governments adopt food security programmes as a response to political motivations, it is becoming evident that such programmes, particularly in countries that are net agricultural exporters, are likely to distort global agricultural markets. Undoubtedly, there is a need to contextualize the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Agriculture to reflect the current trends in agricultural markets. However, an overhaul of the existing global agricultural trading system to allow countries to adopt protectionist food security policies can be detrimental to the economic stability of the global agricultural market. Annex 2 of the WTO Agreement on Agriculture provides developing countries with an opportunity to implement judicious policies to support their rural farming communities and to contribute to the well being of the domestic agricultural sector. Meanwhile, provisions on food aid, calculation of Aggregate Measure of Support and export restrictions on food need to be re-evaluated to make them relevant to current times. Ultimately, the challenge of creating food security within a country is unlikely to be resolved only by a change in WTO disciplines on agriculture: domestic policy initiatives to address issues related to domestic infrastructure and social protection programmes for poor populations will be necessary to achieve a greater impact.

The issue of skin colour has eluded the Indian social work curriculum as an insignificant matter of trivia. However, despite the fact skin colour remains of Indian cultural and social significance. Subsequently, the skin colour issue is then manifested by the bleaching syndrome in stealth inclusive of gender, health and economics. The dynamics of this manifestation are commensurate with dark-skinned Indians in the Indian society at-large. However, reference to the bleaching syndrome is iconoclastic in the Indian scenario and public acknowledgement of it per skin colour is a cultural taboo. While assessing social work curriculum content in an alien Western context, native Indian criteria such as skin colour are rendered vague. Skin colour variables extending from the various sectors of Indian society are then dismissed from curriculum study as insignificant curriculum content. A viable solution might consider inclusion of the bleaching syndrome per skin colour as required curriculum content in Indian social work education to resolve the problem.

The growth of digital trade is dependant upon greater interconnectivity across borders. Several countries strive to achieve such interconnectivity and integration in digital trade through international trade agreements. Digital trade integration is a complex, multidimensional process that integrates regulatory structures/policy designs, digital technologies and business processes along the entire global/regional digital value chain. This paper sets out five foundational elements of digital trade integration: reducing digital trade barriers; digital trade facilitation; digital trade regulatory frameworks and digital trust policies; digital development and inclusion; and institutional coordination. It then examines the extent to which Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) can or do contribute to digital integration. Some recent PTAs contain ambitious provisions to reduce regulatory barriers in digital trade and facilitate cross-border data flows. However, most PTAs fail to holistically support the five pillars of digital trade integration, and are particularly deficient in supporting digital development and inclusion, incorporating adequate digital trade facilitation measures, and facilitating meaningful international regulatory cooperation. This paper provides various policy recommendations to address such deficiencies. This paper also contains a case study of digital trade integration in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). It argues that the ASEAN framework currently functions as a weak form of digital trade integration, focusing mainly on political goodwill and high-level cooperation. Although the ASEAN Members are committed to enhancing regulatory cooperation and strengthening their institutions on electronic commerce, the development asymmetry coupled with the conflicting policy preferences of ASEAN Members remains a key obstacle.