Experts tackle challenges faced by small states in international negotiations
12 Jun 2009
Small nations’ limited “room for manoeuvre” subject of debate between scholars and policy-makers at Commonwealth Secretariat
Small states are “vulnerable to arm-twisting” when involved in international trade and contract negotiations, an audience of diplomats, policy researchers and journalists heard this week.
Lady Glenys Kinnock, chair of the ‘Challenges to Small States in the Multilateral Trade System’ debate at the Commonwealth Secretariat on 10 June, said smaller countries face numerous difficulties when dealing with larger countries, institutions and international organisations.
The former Member of the European Parliament and
Small states suffer from “limited diversification, poverty... natural disasters and environmental degradation, remoteness, volatility and the high costs of production - as if that’s not enough,” she told an audience of around fifty at Marlborough House, the Secretariat’s headquarters in
Professor Ngaire Woods, director of the Global Economic Governance Programme at University College Oxford opened the discussion by presenting the findings of a major joint research project, ‘Manoeuvring at the Margins: Constraints faced by Small States in International Trade Negotiations’.
Her study, which investigated why small countries’ success in negotiations is limited, will be published by the Commonwealth Secretariat later this year.
Woods said that small countries’ “room for manoeuvre” was limited by difficulties in retaining personnel in negotiating teams and in co-ordinating negotiations, among other factors.
“Co-ordination becomes critical for small states in defining and pursuing their goals,” she said.
The debate also featured contributions from Claire Durkin, director of International Trade at the
Source:The Commonwelath Secretariat
