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About ILEAP
Context
Globalization and regional integration are rapidly transforming the social and economic landscape the world over. While these present immense opportunities for economic development, the benefits are not equally distributed. It is widely recognized that unless significant adjustments are made to current globalization trends, developing countries may not be in a position to take advantage of potential benefits and many will experience net losses. Key prerequisites for these countries to benefit from globalization are missing in the current global arrangements. For example, these countries have limited access to multi-disciplinary, impartial, expert development advice relative to that available to industrial countries. In addition to this human resource deficiency, developing countries do not have the institutional infrastructure necessary to derive benefits from globalization. This significant asymmetry in access to professional advice cannot help but disadvantage these countries.
Mission
ILEAP is incorporated as a non-profit organization in Canada. Our vision is to promote pro-development outcomes in international negotiations. Our mission, or contribution to this vision, is to increase the effective participation of developing countries in trade negotiations. When it comes to the ability of developing countries in obtaining pro-development outcomes in international negotiations, their main weakness is the lack of expertise to formulate well-informed negotiation positions and to provide their negotiators with timely advice. ILEAP aims to help reduce the deficit in professional advice within developing countries in international negotiations by providing a non-governmental, multidisciplinary, capacity-building and advisory support service. To this end, ILEAP has identified 8 main objectives that address the capacity problem in developing countries:
- Provide analytical support to current negotiations in the form of practical research papers
- Assist in the formulation of negotiation positions
- Provide timely advice primarily through a network of Southern partners
- Facilitate access to information and analytical tools for researchers, negotiators and policymakers (such as databases and literature)
- Foster the development of the next generation of trade/development experts
- Build networks of trade experts for general support and issue-specific support
- Facilitate the interface between capital-based and Geneva-based trade missions and within government ministries
- Train existing civil servants involved in trade-related work
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