Services Sector in a Globalized Economy

Opening Markets for Trade in Services highlights the key challenges and opportunities for the services sector in a globalized economy. This new book — co-published by the World Trade Organization and Cambridge University Press — focuses on the unilateral action taken by countries across the world as well as the bilateral and multilateral liberalization of trade in services. It explores the challenges, motivations and achievements of the growing number of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) between countries and of the global trade negotiations within the WTO.

The publication includes studies on a wide range of sectors, such as air transport, distribution, audiovisual services, postal services, energy, finance and telecommunications, and on a variety of themes, such as cross-border trade, government procurement and the movement of natural persons. Chapters covering each of these sectors/themes review market and regulatory developments, discuss key negotiating issues and assess the liberalization already achieved by PTAs and WTO negotiations. The book also looks ahead to future opportunities and challenges.
The book also includes case studies on countries as diverse as Australia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, India, Singapore, South Africa, Thailand and Uruguay. These case studies aim to shed light on the elements that have shaped bilateral and multilateral negotiations on services. What are the reasons for negotiating bilateral agreements? Why do negotiations lead to such different results? What role is played by national interests? 
Contributors to this volume include WTO staff, negotiators, academics and experts from other international organizations. A foreword has been provided by the WTO's Director-General, Pascal Lamy. (courtsy-WTO)

Posted by Vidyanand Acharya

New threats to human security in Contemporary age

 

INTRODUCTION

New threats to human security in the Anthropocene: Demanding greater solidarity

Covid-19 has affected everyone, imperiling every dimension of our well-being and injecting an acute sense of fear across the globe. It is not hard to understand how Covid-19 has led people to feel more insecure but fears were growing pre-pandemic. While the world was reaching unprecedented levels of the Human Development Index (HDI); an estimated 6 out of 7 people globally felt insecure in the years leading to the pandemic. And this feeling of insecurity was not only high—it had been growing in most countries with data, including a surge in some countries with the highest HDI values.

Figure 1 Perceptions of human insecurity are widespread worldwide

For the first time, indicators of human development have declined—and drastically. In 2021, even with the availability of very unequally distributed Covid-19 vaccines, the economic recovery that started in many countries and the partial return to schools, the crisis deepened in health, with a drop in life expectancy at birth. And the HDI, adjusted for Covid-19, had yet to recover about five years of progress, according to new simulations (figure 2).

Figure 2 The Covid-19 pandemic has caused an unprecedented decline in Human Development Index values

It is not hard to understand how Covid-19 has made people feel more insecure. But what accounts for the startling split between improvements in wellbeing achievements and declines in people’s perception of security? That is the motivating question for this Report. In addressing it, we hope to avoid returning to pathways of human development with human insecurity.