The Impact of Accession to WTO on Economic Development in Least Developed Countries

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.211220.047How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Afghanistan; LDCs; THE WTO

Abstract

The essay explores why Afghanistan is willing to join the WTO and comply with the WTO rules; as an LDC country, how the accession to the WTO affects Afghanistan’s economic situation. Afghanistan officially joined the WTO in 2016 after a long period of negotiation. Due to the political deadlock, domestic insecurity and the continuous war that happened within the nation that harmed the nation’s economy, Afghanistan is one of the representatives of the LDCs. The essay uses the case study method to analyze Afghanistan’s accession to the WTO, and the essay hopes to have broader lessons of cooperation between LDCs and the WTO. The result reveals that Afghanistan joined the WTO in 2016 to promote the domestic reforms and speed up the transformation to “a more effective and functioning market economy that attracts investment, creates jobs and improves the welfare of the people of Afghanistan.” But the real situation is different from the ideal purpose of the government. We found that Afghanistan wasn’t involved in any treat disputes after joining the WTO and was not active in other kinds of trading cooperation due to the fact that many countries are not willing to make economic cooperation with Afghanistan because of their political and social insecurity. We suggest that least developed countries like Afghanistan should first ensure political and social stability and security and then try to increase their production capacity and build a solid infrastructure. In conclusion, the essay deepens our understanding of how domestic politics would affect the cooperation between IOs and countries. Moreover, the essay can be useful for a further policy recommendation for IOs when they want to cooperate with individual countries. Admittedly, the essay is limited because the essay is only analyzing the case of Afghanistan. Further studies can look into other countries of LDCs.

Copyright

© 2021 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL.

Open Access

This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Zhaosiya Liu
AU  - Xiyuan Zuo
PY  - 2021
DA  - 2021/12/24
TI  - The Impact of Accession to WTO on Economic Development in Least Developed Countries
BT  - Proceedings of the 2021 4th International Conference on Humanities Education and Social Sciences (ICHESS 2021)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 276
EP  - 280
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.211220.047
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.211220.047
ID  - Liu2021
ER  -