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Nigeria's Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is all set to become the first woman and the first African to lead the World Trade Organization after South Korea's candidate pulled out of the race for the job. Yoo Myung-hee, the South Korean trade minister, announced her decision to withdraw in a televised briefing on Friday.
In a statement, Yoo, the South Korean Trade Minister, said that she had been “in consultation with major countries such as the United States” over the consensus vote to become the next director general of the WTO.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Yoo Myung-hee qualified for the final round in October 2020. They were picked out of a pool of five candidates.
Soon, she Okonjo-Iweala was recommended by top WTO officials to lead the Geneva body, after being judged to have had majority support among members, but the appointment was blocked by the United States under the Trump administration.
Reportedly, despite Yoo’s decision to drop out of the race, Okonjo-Iweala’s leadership will not be confirmed until all 164 members give their consent. But with no alternative candidate, her appointment now appears to be a formality, ending a long battle against a strong field of candidates, at a time when the global trading system has been fraught with geopolitical tensions.
Okonjo-Iweala, an economist and former finance minister of Nigeria, already enjoy broad support from WTO members, including the European Union, China, Japan and Australia. She spent 25 years at the World Bank as a development economist, rising to the position of managing director. She also chaired the board of Gavi, which is helping to distribute coronavirus vaccines globally, stepping down at the end of her term in December.
The previous WTO director-general, Roberto Azevedo of Brazil, made a surprise announcement in May that he would leave the job a year early, citing a “personal decision.” He left without a successor on August 31.
Azevedo's seven-year tenure was marked by intense pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump, who repeatedly accused the WTO of “unfair” treatment of the U.S. and started a trade war with China in defiance of the WTO system. In the past, Trump has threatened to pull the United States out of the trade body altogether.
The WTO's dispute settlement system is perhaps the world's best-known venue for resolving international trade disputes - such as those pitting plane-makers Boeing and Airbus in recent decades. But the United States has clogged up the dispute settlement machinery by blocking any new members for its highest court, the Appellate Body, which has unable to address new disputes since last year.
The WTO, which was created in 1995 out of the former General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, has never had a woman director-general or national from Africa as its leader. It operates by consensus, meaning that any single member country can block decisions.
