Young Omani becomes first GCC national to win WTO Accessions Internship

In a significant development, a young Omani has become the first GCC national to be accepted into the Accessions Internship Programme of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

Muhanna al Lawati (pictured), who is currently in the final year of his master’s programme at the Geneva Graduate Institute (Switzerland), is among just four candidates selected from around the world to be part of the 2024 cohort.

The 10-month WTO Accessions Internship Programme is remarkable for its direct engagement with the processes and challenges of WTO accession. It offers the opportunity to work with acceding governments at different stages of the process, including understanding the comprehensive negotiations, legal commitments, and economic reforms that WTO accession requires.

Muhanna completed his bachelor’s at the University of

Toronto, where he specialised in the history, political economy, and international relations of the Middle East. He is currently researching statebuilding in the Gulf as part of his master’s programme at the Geneva Graduate Institute, Switzerland.

His interest in the World WTO Accessions Internship Programme is driven by a desire to understand firsthand the processes involved in a nation’s accession to the WTO, particularly as completed by the Sultanate of Oman under Article XII of the Marrakesh Agreement.

This programme offers a direct avenue to study how countries like Oman navigated the accession process before its membership in 2000 and aligned their trade practices with WTO rules and standards.