GENEVA, Nov. 30 (Xinhua) -- The World Trade Organization (WTO) convenes its seventh ministerial conference here on Monday to review its work, while trade negotiations are not on the agenda of the three-day gathering.

    The following is a brief introduction to the WTO:

    WTO was created on Jan. 1, 1995, to replace the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which was the only multilateral instrument governing international trade from 1948 until WTO' s foundation.

    Now having 153 members, WTO is expected to lower trade barriers and encourage multilateral trade.

    On its official website, WTO describes itself as an organization for liberalizing trade, a forum for governments to negotiate trade agreements, and a place for them to settle trade disputes.

    The WTO agreements deal with agriculture, banking, industrial standards and product safety, food sanitation regulations and intellectual property rights among others.

    The organization is currently endeavoring to persist with a trade negotiation called the Doha Development Agenda (or Doha Round), which has been dogged by disagreements since it was launched in 2001.

    The current WTO chief, or director-general, is Pascal Lamy, a French man who had been the European Commissioner for Trade.

    According to the WTO' s statistics, the total trade volume of its members currently accounts for more than 95 percent of the world trade.