Obreal and the WTO Chairs Programme highlight academia–policy partnerships at the Aid for Trade Global Review 2026

Obreal, a partner of the World Trade Organization (WTO) through its Chairs Programme (WCP), co-organised, with the support of the Catalan Government (Government of the Generalitat of Catalonia), the session “Linking Academia to Policymakers in Developing Economies”,  of the Aid-for-Trade Global Review 2026, held in the WTO headquarters in Geneva. The Global Review, a biennial event jointly convened by the OECD and the WTO, brings together policymakers, international organisations and development practitioners to examine trade and development needs and strengthen partnerships.

Proposed by Austria, France and the Republic of Korea, the three WCP donor countries, the session built on two years of collaboration between Obreal and the WCP, connecting academia and knowledge production with trade, multilateralism and development, and explored how universities contribute to trade policymaking in developing economies and how partnerships can catalyse this work.

WTO Deputy Director-General Xiangchen Zhang opened the session, expressing his support for the collaboration between the WCP and Obreal. The discussion was moderated by Mark Wu, Henry L. Stimson Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and President of the WCP Academic Advisory Board.

The panel brought together representatives of the WCP’s three regional networks: Manfred Kouty, from the International Relations Institute of Cameroon, coordinating the African network; Georgios Dimitropoulos, from Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Qatar, coordinating the Asian network; and Sofía Boza, from the University of Chile, coordinating  the Latin American and Caribbean network. Marina Larrea participated on behalf of Obreal. This regional representation enabled an interregional dialogue grounded in the experiences of WTO Chairs across Africa, Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean.

Speakers shared examples of how Chairs in their regions work with governments, trade negotiators and other national stakeholders. Their contributions illustrated how research, training and networking can inform public decisions and strengthen participation in the multilateral trading system, and how partnerships help mobilise expertise, connect institutions and expand the reach of these activities.

Marina Larrea presented the collaboration developed by Obreal and the WCP over the past two years, including the two academic conferences in Yaoundé in 2025 and 2026 and joint activities in Berlin and Geneva. She also outlined opportunities to deepen this work as concrete contributions to the Aid-for-Trade Initiative: sustaining the academic conferences preceding WTO Ministerial Conferences, broadening cooperation among university networks, and developing a multilingual training initiative on international trade relations.

This collaboration is framed in Obreal’s Interregional Dialogue Process and connects its two axes: a) Education and Development, which places universities at the centre of development, and b) Multilateralism, Trade and Regional Integration, which links knowledge with equitable negotiation and regional participation in a more plural international order. Cooperation with the WCP gives these objectives practical expression through research, training and sustained exchanges between academic institutions and policymakers across regions.

The collaboration will continue through Obreal’s support for upcoming events with the WTO Chairs in Morocco and Chile. In Morocco on 12–14 November, the WTO Chair at Mohammed V University will host the 20th Rabat International Colloquium, “Multilateralism Challenged by the Rise of Industrial and Commercial Sovereignism”. In Chile, cooperation with the WTO Chair at the University of Chile will contribute to the conference  “The Evolving Landscape of International Economic Law”, that will take place in Santiago on 2–4 December, alongside the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC/CEPAL) and the Latin American Network of International Economic Law (RedLatDEI).