The World Trade Organization's Public Forum is intended to provide civil society, academics and the public at large with an opportunity to debate with WTO Members how the WTO can best contribute to the management of globalization. This year's forum, entitled "How Can the WTO Help Harness Globalization?", features two-days of presentations and discussions related to international trade and development. On 5 October, from 16:30- 18:30, the International Institute for Sustainable Development's Global Subsidies Initiative will organize a session entitled "The WTO's record in addressing trade-distorting subsidies: An Assessment of its record and proposals for improving its performance." The objectives of this session are to review the WTO's record in addressing trade-distorting subsidies; to underscore the importance of transparency - particularly in the notification of subsidies - in ensuring that the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (ASCM) works as intended; and to explain the work of the Global Subsidies Initiative, which has developed and proposed a new notification template, and is testing it out on several countries.