166 members and a Ministerial Conference: how the World Trade Organization is put together

Background

The World Trade Organization was established on 1 January 1995 and has its seat at Geneva in Switzerland. It has 166 members, which together account for 98 per cent of world trade. The organization came out of the Uruguay Round of negotiations held between 1986 and 1994, which followed decades of trade rules under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Its highest decision-making body is the Ministerial Conference; the twelfth such conference, MC12, met at Geneva in June 2022. Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is the seventh Director-General of the WTO. Members use the organization to negotiate trade rules and to settle disputes with one another under agreed procedures. India is a founding member.