Following the Seattle Round of WTO trade talks in 1999, a group of leaders from various multilateral agencies, including the WTO, identified an important and timely opportunity to create a bridge between the increasingly disparate groups which had a major stake in globalization and the way it was being managed.  It was obvious that a growing gap in knowledge and communication would ultimately impede progress that all sides of the globalization debated. Unless a mechanism could be created to address this gap, then opportunities for growth and shared prosperity among all nations, especially those with developing countries and emerging economies would ultimately be missed.

The leaders of these agencies also realized that existing multilateral agencies and governmental structures did not have the positioning, resources or the capacity to play this bridging role. In 2001, a vision was born for a bridge-building mechanism that could help foster a broader understanding of the multilateral trade system among emerging and senior professionals throughout the world. The mechanism, named World Trade University, would become an applied learning agency focused on providing affordable, accessible global trade capacity building for entrepreneurs and policy-makers from least developed countries (LDC's), developing countries, countries in transition, and emerging economies.

The World Trade University (WTU) Global Secretariat was officially launched at the Third United Nations Conference on Least Developed Countries, hosted by the European Union, Brussels in May 2001. The launching ceremony was chaired by the Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Canada to the World Trade Organization.  

WTU Global Secretariat is a coordinating body of the World Trade University. It activities include: research on the trade issues both globally and locally; research on educational needs of global and local business communities; design, organization and delivery of learning programs with the cooperation of its partners; organizing Global Platform Events, including the World Trade Forum and related sub-initiatives (WSYE, WTMS, WSIE, WTFF); providing internships to aspiring entrepreneurs and young leaders; developing and managing programmes and delivering trade promotion services.

The WTU Global Secretariat is strategically designed as an ‘interlocking’ organization with three main areas of strategic focus:

1)  Firstly, it will implement innovative ideas and techniques to educate and to disseminate information, which is the key to assessing and exploiting markets. The WTU will deliver two types of learning programs, MBA's and executive development programs (EDP's). WTU learning programs provide a blending learning approach to delivering executive graduate degree programs, and general executive learning programs relating to trade issues and topics. Its blended learning model combines face to face, classroom techniques with online learning tools and modules, coaching and mentoring, as well as knowledge resources.

2)  Secondly, it will implement key global and regional events and activities related to its global platform. The goal is to connect key global entrepreneurs and executives to forge new opportunities for economic growth in developing and emerging economies. The cornerstone of the global platform is the World Trade Forum, which will ultimately be held every two years, to address trade and related issues, with a focus on those pertaining to the WTO and the promotion of rules based trade. 

3)  Thirdly, the WTU’s will provide a portfolio of global trade services will enhance the sustainability of the opportunities resulting from the knowledge and relationships that are generated from its other two strategic areas. These services will include World Trade Resource Centre (connections to trade resources), the WTU Ecademy (online executive learning) and the World Trade Knowledge Network (knowledge based communities).

The WTU has a very high level mandate to add value and enhance economic and social well being in countries and communities we serve around the world. This mandate especially holds strong in the community the WTU Global Secretariat chooses to locate in. Its commitment to its global home base of operations is to work closely with the community, and become as integrated as possible to achieve high positive economic and social impacts.

WTU's Values and Commitments are:

Student Success

The success of the students, and their ability to achieve their educational goals.

 Lifelong Learning

• Increasing student motivation and inspiration to learn on a continuous basis.

• Promote and foster self directed learning, supported by tools and relationships

• Increase opportunities to learn, through access to timely and relevant knowledge, and global opportunity networks

• Promotion of clear benefits of  continuous learning with enterprise opportunities

Global Citizenship and Diversity

WTU believes in harmonizing values, goals of culture and the practice taking place each day in business and societies around the world. The best way to achieve this is through education and awareness built on diversity of people and their ideas and ways of life. WTU programs will inherently promote diversity through its faculty, its student base, and exposure of students to perspective and experiences globally.

Student and Community involvement in Program Design and Decision making

We believe in providing our students and program participants with opportunities for involvement and engagement that are unique and life enhancing, as they also provide value for the continuous improvement of our services and programs in return.

Promotion of Leadership and Innovation

For almost a decade, our commitment to fostering leadership in the world’s young people and emerging entrepreneurs and executives has remained strong. 

Our commitments include:

• Maintaining long term relationships with our students and program participants to maintain their connection to economic and continuous learning opportunities

• Transforming our resources and knowledge into opportunities for our students

• Providing timely and relevant skills and knowledge with respect to the corresponding trade areas, sectors, practices and current issues and rules.

• Being open and inclusive, and promoting diversity of thought and culture

• Our programs unite academic strength with market application.

• We are a highly entrepreneurial organization, and share a commitment to highest levels of excellence in performance and rigorous and relentless pursuit of human progress in all our activities