WTO Law and Dispute Settlement: Workshop for Bhutanese Government Officials

TULIP delivered a training for Bhutanese government officials on WTO law and dispute settlement, commissioned by the International Trade Centre (ITC) as part of its technical assistance programme supporting Bhutan’s engagement with the multilateral trading system. The four-day workshop was held in Phuentsholing, a town in southern Bhutan on the border with India, and brought together government officials working in trade and customs, academics, and private sector representatives.

Bhutan’s engagement with the WTO is shaped by a distinctive development context. As a small, landlocked country with a strong commitment to environmental sustainability — reflected in its constitutional mandate to maintain forest coverage of at least sixty percent of its territory — Bhutan faces particular challenges in navigating the multilateral trading system. Bhutan is not yet a WTO member, though it has reactivated its accession process after a fifteen-year hiatus, making it important for Bhutanese officials to develop a solid understanding of the rights, obligations, and flexibilities that WTO membership entails.

The training covered the key elements of WTO law most relevant to Bhutan’s trade policy context, including the structure of the WTO agreements and the rules governing goods trade, services trade, and trade-related intellectual property, with a particular focus on dispute settlement under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT), the Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS), the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (SCM), and the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS).  The workshop also addressed dispute settlement under Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) and Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs), drawing on case law to illustrate how WTO rules are interpreted and applied in practice.