Beirut‘s long wait for the WTO

The Arab world continues to underperform economically and remains a minor player in the area of international business, despite the oil boom and rise of sovereign wealth funds. That failure is partly because so much of the region still lies outside the globalized economic system, including regional and international treaties and bodies. In particular, the region remains seriously under- represented in the World Trade Organization (WTO), with ten out of 22 Arab League members not having acceded. Moreover, there is a suspicion that states already part of the organization are not making effective use of their membership while those countries that are in the process of acceding, or otherwise outside the WTO, could enhance significantly their positions. At the same time, there is a great deal of interest in the WTO in the Arab region, and several countries have completed their accession over the past few years while other states