"Corona" is accelerating alarmingly, and the World Trade Organization conference is postponed
The World Trade Organization (WTO) on Friday postponed its first ministerial conference in four years at the last minute, due to the emergence of the worrying mutant Omicron, dashing hopes of re-launching the organization's work.
After an emergency meeting Friday, the 164 members of the World Trade Organization agreed to postpone the twelfth ministerial conference “indefinitely” in the wake of the spread of the Omicron mutator “which prompted many governments to impose severe travel restrictions, which will prevent many ministers from going to Geneva, according to the organization.
"This does not mean that negotiations should stop," said WHO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. On the contrary".
The World Trade Organization is the first international organization in Geneva to bear the consequences of the emergence of the mutant Omicron, which was initially spotted in South Africa and classified by the World Health Organization as “alarming” a few hours before the WTO ministerial meeting was postponed.
According to the European Union's health agency, the new mutant represents a high to very high risk for Europe.
Attention now turns to the World Health Organization, whose 194 members are due to discuss a pandemic treaty next week.
Annabelle Gonzalez, deputy director of the WTO, said on Twitter that the ministerial meeting was postponed and all members supported the decision, confirming comments made earlier by a diplomatic source to AFP.
"It was the right decision," Gonzalez added.
4,000 people were supposed to attend the WTO conference, from November 30 to December 3.
This ministerial conference was initially scheduled to be held in Kazakhstan in June 2020, but was postponed after the first cases of Covid appeared at the end of 2019.
After a period of relative decline in the pandemic in recent months in Europe, the World Trade Organization decided to hold the ministerial meeting in Geneva. But the fifth wave of the virus that the world is witnessing, and the emergence of the new mutant Omicron, dashed hopes that it could contract.
"The postponement of the meeting has just been confirmed," a diplomatic source told AFP, shortly after Switzerland announced travel measures in an attempt to deal with the emergence of the new mutant.
According to the World Trade Organization, Okonjo-Iweala told the diplomats that the online meeting would not have allowed for complex negotiations on politically sensitive issues.
The European Ambassador to the World Trade Organization, Joao Aguiar Machado, acknowledged that the decision to postpone the meeting was not an easy choice, but it was the right one.
Many observers considered it difficult for the 164 members of the World Trade Organization to be able to conclude major agreements during this 12th WTO Ministerial, particularly on fishing and the issue of intellectual property rights during the pandemic.
But many still hoped that this meeting would at least break the deadlock in the discussions.
"The ministerial conference offers the possibility of finding political solutions to issues that cannot be resolved by technical solutions alone," said Dmitriy Grozubinsky, director of the Trade Platform Organization in Geneva.
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