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World Trade Organization

Current members of the WTO (in green)

Formation 1 January 1995 Headquarters Geneva, Switzerland Membership 152 member states Official languages English, French, Spanish [1] Director-General Pascal Lamy Budget 182 million Swiss francs (approx. 141 million USD) Staff 625[2] Website www.wto.int

The World Trade Organization (WTO), (OMC - French: Organisation mondiale du commerce, Spanish: OrganizaciĆ³n Mundial del Comercio), is an international organization designed to supervise and liberalize international trade. The WTO came into being on January 1, 1995, and is the successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which was created in 1948, and continued to operate for almost five decades as a de facto international organization.

The World Trade Organization deals with the rules of trade between nations at a near-global level; it is responsible for negotiating and implementing new trade agreements, and is in charge of policing member countries' adherence to all the WTO agreements, signed by the bulk of the world's trading nations and ratified in their parliaments.[3][4] Most of the WTO's current work comes from the 1986-94 negotiations called the Uruguay Round, and earlier negotiations under the GATT. The organization is currently the host to new negotiations, under the Doha Development Agenda (DDA) launched in 2001.[3][2]

The WTO is governed by a Ministerial Conference, which meets every two years; a General Council, which implements the conference's policy decisions and is responsible for day-to-day administration; and a director-general, who is appointed by the Ministerial Conference. The WTO's headquarters are in Geneva, Switzerland.

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