Tuesday, July 9, 2013

This year’s Annual Conference marks a transition as the WCP program is nearing its end. The Conference will take place over two days, with the first day having a strong focus on research outputs and the second day specifically addressing the achievements of the programme and reflections on the way forward.
The first conference day will be dedicated to presentations by WCP Chairs on the results of individual research papers addressing the theme “Overcoming Supply Side Constraints: Issues for Policy Makers”. This research segment will be open to Geneva based policy makers and academics in order to enhance visibility of the WTO Chairs Programme. The event may also attract participants of the Aid for Trade Review, which takes place at the WTO on July 8-10. Indeed, the theme "overcoming supply side constraints" is likely to complement well the discussions at the Aid for Trade Global review.
The objectives pursued on the second day of the conference are twofold: to assess its achievements (with a focus on 2012) and to discuss the future of the programme. These reflections will be conducted by WTO Chairs, the Advisory Board Members, WCP Counterparts and the WCP team.
The first three sessions of the second day will be structured around the three pillars of the WCP programme: curriculum development-teaching, research and outreach. The output generated by the Chairs will be presented for each of these three pillars. The relevant presentations will be prepared by the WCP team of the WTO Secretariat, in close co-ordination and collaboration with the WCP Chairs in the run-up to the event. Members of the Advisory Board and WCP counterparts will be invited to contribute to the discussion on the generated outputs. It is expected that this approach will be conducive to providing a comprehensive and structured overview of the achievements of the WCP program in the past year and that the resulting discussions will provide useful guidance for future work.
An active and constructive participation of moderators, discussants, Chairs and participants would set the stage for the final session of the second day, providing further guidance on the future of the WCP program. A discussion paper will be prepared by the Secretariat for this purpose.