Experts tackle challenges faced by small states in international negotiations

Small states are “vulnerable to arm-twisting” when involved in international trade and contract negotiations, an audience of diplomats, policy researchers and journalists heard recently.

Lady Glenys Kinnock, chair of the ‘Challenges to Small States in the Multilateral Trade System’ debate at the Commonwealth Secretariat on 10 June 2009, said smaller countries face numerous difficulties when dealing with larger countries, institutions and international organisations.

The former Member of the European Parliament and UK Minister for Europe said: “It is not just trade which offers really serious challenges and difficulties - all international negotiations are difficult for small states with less capacity.”

Small states suffer from “limited diversification, poverty ... natural disasters and environmental degradation, remoteness, volatility and the high costs of production - as if that’s not enough,” she told an audience of around fifty at Marlborough House, the Secretariat’s headquarters in London.

Professor Ngaire Woods, director of the Global Economic Governance Programme at University College Oxford, opened the discussion by presenting the findings of a major joint research project, ‘Manoeuvring at the Margins: Constraints faced by Small States in International Trade Negotiations’.

Her study, which investigated why small countries’ success in negotiations is limited, will be published by the Commonwealth Secretariat later this year.

Professor Woods explained that small countries’ “room for manoeuvre” was limited by difficulties in retaining personnel in negotiating teams and in co-ordinating negotiations, among other factors.

“Co-ordination becomes critical for small states in defining and pursuing their goals,” she said.

The debate also featured contributions from Claire Durkin, Director of International Trade at the UK’s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, Ambassador Lingston Cumberbatch of the TradeCom Facility for African, Caribbean and Pacific Countries, Professor Ruth Okediji from the University of Minnesota, and Dr Cyrus Rustomjee, Director of the Secretariat’s Economic Affairs Division, among others.

Howard Mann, Senior Lawyer for the International Institute for Sustainable Development, warned that small nations face problems when engaged in negotiations with international companies over the sale of land.

“The mismatch is enormous,” he pointed out, noting that some countries’ legal teams find it hard to compete with expensive private lawyers who are “paid £600 an hour or more”.

“It is a mismatch that leads to significant distortion in the contracts and often in the treaty negotiations, which can be on a ‘take it or leave it’ basis,” he said.

Ransford Smith, Deputy Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, added that the Secretariat is “very committed to moving the small states agenda forward”.

He said: “We seek to move beyond the mere acknowledgement of their development challenges to identify concrete policy interventions and best practices in support of small member states whilst actively engaging the international community on these issues.”

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