WTO Confidential: The Case of Asbestos

Abstract

The World Trade Organization (WTO), created in 1995, adjudicates “trade disputes” between member nations in cases with great human rights, cultural, environmental, and public health significance. Throughout the process of dispute resolution and even after a case is concluded, very little of what happens is made accessible to the public. However, it is one thing to criticize the WTO for its lack of transparency from outside the process, and another to critically examine what was withheld from disclosure and what dangers that presents. This is the inside story from a scientific adviser to one of the parties in a WTO case, analyzing what happened from a public health point of view. This analysis concludes that the public health justification of banning asbestos was accepted in the end by the economists at the WTO, despite the WTO's bias in favoring the party (Canada) making the free trade challenge (to public health legislation, in this case) in numerous stages of the process, despite the WTO's utter lack of expertise in science, medicine, engineering, and public health, and despite important erroneous statements made to the WTO under the cover of confidentiality. Despite its result, this case illustrates that the WTO's threat to national sovereignty could never withstand the light of day, that the people of the world would reject this dangerous free trade fundamentalism if the limitations and dangers of the process were open for all to see.