Current Affairs Question - 18 February 2021

Explanation :

Context: Recently, Nigeria’s Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has been appointed the new chief of the World Trade Organization, becoming the first woman to ever lead the institution and the first African citizen to take on the role.

• The World Trade Organization (WTO) is the only global international organization dealing with the rules of trade between nations. At its heart are the WTO agreements, negotiated and signed by the bulk of the world’s trading nations and ratified in their parliaments.
• Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, the WTO has 164 members (including European Union) and 23 observer governments (like Iran, Iraq, Bhutan, Libya etc).
• The Uruguay Round, conducted from 1987 to 1994, culminated in the Marrakesh Agreement, which established the World Trade Organization (WTO).
• The topmost decision-making body of the WTO is the Ministerial Conference, which usually meets every two years.
• It brings together all members of the WTO, all of which are countries or customs unions.
• India has been a member of the WTO since January 1995 and also had been a member of the WTO’s forerunner General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) since July 1948.