Special and Differential Treatment of Developing Countries in the Uruguay Round Agricultural Negotiations

This paper argues that the Uruguay Roung (UR) negotiators should not compel developing countries to liberalize their respective agricultural sectors because their non-agricultural manufacturing sectors remain protected. One-sided agricultural liberalization is inconsistent with promoting agricultural development, encourages rural-urban migration, and unnecessarily constrains agricultural policy movement and planning. Thus, special rules should apply for developing countries. In developing the argument, the paper traces the evolution of special and differential treatment for developing countries in the GATT and discusses some of the critical issues in the UR agricultural negotiations. The paper also argues that a mechanism for reviewing invocations by developing countries of the principle of S $ D should be agreed upon and decided by the UR negotiators. In the interest of agricultural development, all developing countries should be accorded special measures in order to develop. Such measures applied on a per product basis may be questioned by any/contracting party before a possible GATT committee that would be tasked to deal with agricultural S&D complaints, with the power to decide whether the product-specific agricultural development measures under question are legitimate.