Regional Trade Facilitation coordination

Following the raft of ad-hoc trade measures taken by countries in response to the COVID-19 crisis, the United Nations ESCAP secretariat conducted a rapid review of bilateral and regional trade agreement (RTA) texts to see if they provided any guidance on what partners should do to ensure minimal disruption to trade and supply chains in such crises. As expected, RTAs include clauses in order to permit exception to the agreements in time of emergencies; but for the most part they do not feature provisions that could help deal with trade disruption in emergency or crisis situations.

Following the successful conclusion of a Policy Hackathon as part of the Initiative on Model Provisions for Trade in Times of Crisis and Pandemic in Regional and other Trade Agreements, a webinar series is organized to discuss and build upon the 

This Policy Hackathon was organized by ESCAP as part of a United Nations Initiative on Model Provisions for Trade in Times of Crisis and Pandemic in Regional and other Trade Agreements, in collaboration with ARTNeT, WTO, CUTS and other organizations from civil society, academia and the private sector. [Update: Online repository of contributions prepared and selected as a result of the Policy Hackathon are available