Special and Differential Treatment (SDT) Provisions and the Participation of Developing Countries in International Trade: A Case for Reform

This paper examines the usefulness of the Special and Differential Treatment (SDT) Provisions, which have been put in place since the inception of the multilateral trading system, to help developing countries fully integrate into the world trading system. This paper is in support of the school of thought that the SDT provisions are still beneficial to the integration of developing countries in particular and the multilateral trade system in general, because they help to create equality amongst unequally yoked trading blocks. However, it is acknowledged that these SDT provisions are presently of minimal effect due to some controversial issues. These issues include the duration of SDT provisions, graduation clauses in SDT provisions and the lack of binding obligation of SDT provisions on developed countries. The paper goes further to link these challenges of the SDT provisions to the structural and procedural deficiencies in the WTO setup.