On 5 and 6 December 2022, the Secretary General of the World Customs Organization (WCO), Dr. Kunio Mikuriya, participated in the 9th Annual Meeting of the Partnership for International Organisations, hosted by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH), held at the WOAH headquarters in Paris, France. The meeting brought together leaders of International Organizations (IOs), as well as government, academia and civil society representatives to discuss governments’ needs for effective global governance in times of crisis, and the challenges faced by IOs when addressing urgent and structural global disruptions.
Mr. Mathias Cormann, OECD Secretary-General, opened the meeting by stressing the importance of effective global coordination and cooperation to build confidence in public administrations in time of crisis and, at the same time, enhance IOs’ effectiveness. Dr. Monique Eloit, WOAH Director General, called on IOs to show enough flexibility and resilience while encouraging good coordination and cooperation that could mitigate the impact of crisis.
In his online intervention at the opening session, Secretary General Mikuriya highlighted three major challenges faced by the WCO and its Members namely in the field of change in the trade landscape with the exponential growth of e-commerce, climate change, and borders in fragile or conflict situation, which are being addressed through standard-setting. To address the challenges posed to Customs to clear the huge volume of small packages generated by e-commerce, the WCO adopted its E-Commerce Package. For Customs to be in a position to play its part in addressing climate change and environment-related issues, the WCO is reviewing some of its standards such as the Harmonized System from a green angle in view of facilitating supply chains’ monitoring and raising awareness on climate change and environment-related trade. The WCO is also conducting research and preparing recommendations, which could guide those countries in fragile and conflict-affected situations.
Looking to the future, Dr. Mikuriya highlighted the importance and the need of establishing a culture of evaluation while measuring the effectiveness of standards-setting in those disrupted areas and assessing its resulting impact. He also called on the international community to reinforce the existing cooperation platform for experience sharing. The event took place in the wake of the publication of the Compendium of International Organisation’s Practices: Working Towards More Effective International Instruments (IO Compendium). Building on this momentum, the objective of the meeting was to provide IOs with greater impetus, giving them the opportunity to reflect on and improve the way they manage international rulemaking to make it more agile, impactful and inclusive, based on IOs experiences and lessons learned over the past 9 years.