PRESS RELEASE
PRESS/256
21 November 2001
(01-5928)
WTO LAUNCHES THE JOINT CONSULTATIVE BOARD
FOR WTO-RELATED TRAINING
At a meeting held at the WTO headquarters,  the Joint Consultative Board for WTO-related
Training held its inaugural session today in Gene va.  WTO Director-General Mike Moore told the
Board "We have only just touched upon the opport unities offered by distance learning and more
active skill-based networks in member countries.  We do not want to duplicate what other institutions
are doing.  We want to cooperate with them and share facilities, the better to serve our Members.
This is one way in which we are already implementing the Doha decisions on building capacity in acoherent manner."
The Joint Consultative Board was created last June by the Director-General as part of the
restructuring of the organization's technical cooperation and training activities, which also saw the
establishment of the WTO Training Institute.  The Board, which is a consultative entity acting in anadvisory capacity, will monitor the training activities of the Training Institute on the basis of periodic
meetings and reports, providing fresh ideas, expert advice and contributing to greater coherence
among agencies involved in training activities.
To this end, the Director General has secured the participation of leading agencies, reputed
academics and WTO experts as Members of the Board, including the World Bank, the International
Trade Centre (ITC), the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD),
Professor Richard Baldwin, from the Geneva Graduate  Institute of International Studies, Professor
Thomas Cottier, Managing Director of the World Trade Institute (Berne) and Director of the Institute
of European and International Economic Law (University of Berne), and Professor Yvonne VanRooy, from the Katholieke Universiteit Brabant in the Netherlands.
The WTO Members and the Secretariat will be respectively represented by the chairpersons
of WTO bodies directly interested in training activities: the Committee on Trade and Development,
the Sub-committee on Least Developed Countrie s and the Committee on Budget, Finance and
Administration;  by the directors of the Training Institute and the Technical Cooperation Divisions;
and by three WTO experts in law, economics and training acting in their personal advisory capacity.
END