A Legal Analysis of the Application of Articles I and III of the GATT 1994 on the Economic Development of ECOWAS Member States
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This dissertation examines the tension inherent in the relationship between the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) as Member States Parties of the GATT/WTO and the GATT/WTO regime.It focuses specifically on the tension triggered off by the requirements of Article Ithe Most-Favoured-Nation principle (MFN) and Article IIIthe National Treatment principle (NT) GATT 1994.It shows that while the non-discrimination principles are meant to promote trade liberalisation and economic growth, they produce the opposite effect in developing and least developed countries like ECOWAS and aggravate the tension between those countries and the WTO.It argues that the MFN is used to deny market access to the developing countries by exposing them to stiff but unequal competitive conditions and the NT to deny national governments the policy space to protect and promote national industries, employment and economic growth.It challenges the general assumption that the MFN and the NT are good and in the interest of all the WTO Members and rather identifies them as lynch-pins of economic development in the ECOWAS region.It also shows, contrary to the assumption of non-participation, how the ECOWAS High Contracting Parties are adapting their trading systems and harmonising their laws to the key provisions of Articles I and III of the GATT.It shows that the principles of non-discrimination are the outcome of the standard-setting procedures legally formulated as the SPS and TBT Agreements which favour the developed countries and how the Dispute Settlement Body has rejected the 'aims-and-effect' approach, taken a literal approach, overly emphasising trade liberalisation to the neglect of market access and economic development.xi 11.The Leutwiler Report: Trade Policy for a Better Future 382 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………………388Table of Abbreviations AB Appellate Body (of the World Trade Organisation) ACHPR African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights ACP African, Caribbean and Pacific States AGOA African Growth and Opportunities Act AJIL American Journal of International Law AMS Aggregate Measure of Support AU African Union BCEAO La Banque Centrale des Etats de l'Afrique de l'Ouest ('Central Bank of West African States') BYIL British Yearbook of International Law CAC Codex Alimentarius Commission CFA Coopération financière en Afrique centrale ("Financial Cooperation in Central Africa") CET Common External Tariff Colum.J. Eur.L Columbia Journal of European Law COMESA Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa CON-SAD Community of Sahel-Saharan States CUSFTA Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement CVA Canadian Value Added (Tax) DDA Doha Development Agenda DSB Dispute Settlement Body DSU Dispute Settlement Understanding EAC East African Community EBA Everything But Arms EC European Communities ECCAS Economic Community of Central African States ECJ European Court of Justice EEC European Economic Communities ECOSOC Economic and Social
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.012 | 0.023 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.008 | 0.014 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.010 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.006 | 0.007 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".