The World Trade Organization (WTO) has announced that its Annual Public Forum will take place from 28^th to 30 September 2009 at its headquarters in Geneva. The title of this year’s Forum is “Global Problems, Global Solutions: Towards Better Global Governance”. (See WTO website at http://www.wto.org/english/forums_e/ngo_e/forum09_background_e.htm for details). Last year, the topic was “Trading into the Future”. Are we going forward or backwards? One important question to ask about this year’s forum topic is whether global governance is the central issue in thinking about the impact of the financial crisis on trade financing, especially in developing countries and least-developed countries (LDCs), and how to tackle protectionism.

Of the four themes of the Forum, theme 3 (The impact of the global economic crisis on developing countries and LDCs, and the role of trade financing) and theme 4 (The main challenges facing the multilateral trading systems and reflections on the post-crisis agenda for the WTO) are the most critical and relevant. Theme 2 (The role of the WTO and the Doha Round negotiations in the midst of the current financial crisis) could have been interesting if it was focused the following question: In light of the financial crisis, will the Doha negotiations still be relevant if not concluded in 2009.