World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference of 2003

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Location of Cancún

At the World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference of 2003, trade ministers from 146 members of the World Trade Organization (WTO), representing 93 percent of global commerce, convened in Cancún, Mexico, in September 2003. The conference (the fifth WTO Ministerial Conference, or MC5) was held at the Cancún Centro de Convenciones, Cancún. The goal of this meeting was to set a direction for nations within the WTO to negotiate agreements on agriculture, non-agricultural market access, services, and special treatment for developing countries. The negotiations were supposed to be completed by January 1, 2005. Although the agreements had a set date to come to terms, the Cancun Ministerial Conference ended up failing in its mission and did not come to any firm decisions to fix the problems it sought to address. Participants failed to make global trade negotiations concrete and foundered at that time, so the next steps were uncertain. However, attempts were made afterwards to learn from this failure. Within the committee,^{[clarification needed]} there exists a hierarchy within the World Trade Organization. It is made up of trade Administrators that come from all the different sectors of the WTO.