A widely shared assessment of the WTO dispute settlement mechanism is that it has worked reasonably well. But has the mechanism served the interests of developing countries? There were worries during the Uruguay round that developing countries would not benefit from the strong and quasi-judicial dispute settlement procedures of the WTO as they lacked the economic muscle for effective retaliation on which the procedures relied in the end. There were fears also that developing countries would be vulnerable to cross-retaliation by developed countries across the agreements on goods, services and intellectual property agreements.
