God, the WTO – and hunger

Considering that endemic hunger is a consequence of poverty, and that food is arguably the most basic of all human needs, this book chapter shows one of the more prominent examples of rules and policy fragmentation but also one of the most blatant global governance problems. The three monotheistic religions Judaism, Christians and Islam are surprisingly unanimous about God’s prescriptions on hunger or, put theologically, on what can be said, or should be said, about the interpretations and traditions which, taken together, form the respective and differentiated traditions, identities and views of these beliefs on how to deal with poverty and hunger. A clear social ethos, in the form of global needs satisfaction, runs through both Jewish and Christian texts, and the Qur’an (Zakat). It confirms the value inversion between the world of the mighty and that of the hungry. The message is clear: because salvation is available only through the grace of God, those who have must give to those who have not. This is not charity: it is an inversion of values which can not be addressed by spending 0.7% of your GDP on ODA, and the implication of this sense of redistributive justice is that social offenders will be subject to the Last Judgement. Interestingly, these religious scriptures found their way directly into the human rights treaties adopted by the United Nations and ratified by the parliaments, as a legal base for the duty to protect, to respect and to remedy. On the other side the contradiction with international trade law is all the more flagrant, and it has a direct bearing on poverty: systematic surplus food dumping is still allowed under WTO rules, despite the declared objective ‘to establish a fair and market-oriented agricultural trading system’. A way forward would be a kind of ‘bottom up’ approach by focusing on extreme cases of food insecurity caused by food dumping, or by export restrictions where a direct effect of food insecurity in other countries can be established. Also, international financing institutions need to review their policies and lending priorities. The same goes for the bilateral investment treaties and a possible ‘public interest’ clause, at least in respect of agricultural land acquisitions in vulnerable countries. The bottom line is this: WTO rules cannot entail a right to violate other, equally binding treaty obligations when its membership as a whole claims to contribute to the Millennium Development Goals and pledges to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.

The WTO and Food Security: What’s Wrong with the Rules?

The WTO Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) is the predominant multilateral legal framework governing agricultural trade. The objective of the AoA is to liberalise trade in agriculture through reductions in tariffs, domestic support and export subsidies. The AoA has not, however, ‘levelled the playing field’ and has not resulted in the equitable distribution of food, particularly for the poorer developing countries. On the other hand, support for small farmers does not ensure food security for the poor. While food security has no simple solutions such as “free trade is good for you”, reform proposals for trade rules which only address agricultural policy instruments fail to account for consumer and other interests: neither tariff reductions and subsidy disciplines, nor safeguards and other measures of producer protection can automatically increase food security. Rather, what is needed is the full and proper implementation of a number of commitments which the international community has already entered into in various human rights treaties, but which even the envisaged results of the now failed Doha Round negotiations could not ensure without revisiting relevant multilateral trade and investment rules.

Seals and the Need for more Deference to Vienna by WTO Adjudicators

This paper asks how World Trade Organization (WTO) panels and the Appellate Body (AB) take public international law (PIL) into account when interpreting WTO rules as a part of international economic law (IEL). Splendid isolation of the latter is not new; indeed it is intended by the negotiators of the Understanding on the Settlement of Disputes (DSU). At the same time, the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT) is quite clear when it provides the general rules and the supplementary means of treaty interpretation. Despite such mandatory guidance, WTO adjudicators (when given a choice and assuming they see the conflict) prefer deference to WTO law over deference to Vienna and take a dogmatic way out of interpretation quandaries. The AB and panels make abundant reference to Vienna, though less so to substantive PIL. Often times, however, they do so simply in order to buttress their findings of violations of WTO rules. Perhaps tellingly, however, none of the reports in EC – Seals contains even a single mention of VCLT, despite numerous references to international standards addressing indigenous rights and animal welfare. In the longer term, and absent a breakthrough on the negotiation front, this pattern of carefully eschewing international treaty law and using PIL just for the sake of convenience could have serious consequences for the credibility and acceptance of the multilateral trading system. Following the adage ‘negotiate or litigate’ recourse to WTO dispute settlement increases when governments are less ready to make treaty commitments commensurate with the challenges of globalisation. This is true even for ‘societal choice’ cases on the margins of classic trade disputes. We will argue here that it is precisely for cases such as these that VCLT and PIL should be used more systematically by panels and the AB. Failing that, instead of building bridges for more coherent international regulation, WTO adjudicators could burn those same bridges which the DSU interpretation margin leaves open for accomplishing their job which is to find a ‘positive solution’. Worse, judicial incoherence could return to WTO dispute settlement like a boomerang and damage the credibility and thus the level of acceptance of the multilateral trading system per se.

Foreign Direct Investment in Agriculture: Land Grab or Food Security Improvement?

“Large-scale acquisition of land by foreign investors” is the correct term for a process where the verdict of guilt is often quicker than the examination. But is there something really new about land grab except in its extent? In comparison with colonial and post-colonial plantation operations, should foreign investors today behave differently? We generally accept coffee and banana exports as pro-growth and pro-development, just as for cars, beef and insurance. What then is wrong with an investment contract allowing the holder to buy a farm and to export wheat to Saudi Arabia, or soybeans and maize as cattle feed to Korea, or to plant and process sugar cane and palm oil into ethanol for Europe and China? Assuming their land acquisition was legal, should foreigners respect more than investment contracts and national legislation? And why would they not take advantage of the legal protection offered by international investment law and treaties, not to speak of concessional finance, infrastructure and technical cooperation by a development bank, or the tax holidays offered by the host state? Remember Milton Friedman’s often-quoted quip: “The business of business is business!” And why would the governments signing those contracts not know whether and which foreign investment projects are best for their country, and how to attract them? This chapter tries to show that land grab, where it occurs, is not only yet another symptom of regulatory failures at the national level and a lack of corporate social responsibility by certain private actors. National governance is clearly the most important factor. Nonetheless, I submit that there is an international dimension involving investor home states in various capacities. The implication is that land grab is not solely a question whether a particular investment contract is legal or not. This chapter deals with legal issues which seem to have largely escaped the attention of both human rights lawyers and, especially, of investment lawyers. I address this fragmentation between different legal disciplines, rules, and policies, by asking two basic questions: (i) Do governments and parliaments in investor home countries have any responsibility in respect of the behaviour of their investors abroad? (ii) What should they and international regulators do, if anything?

The Chilean Experience in South-South Trade and Investment Agreements

This paper analyzes the main features of Chilean trade and investment treaties, examining if there is a Chilean pattern in the regulation of trade and investment flows or if it is influenced by agreements signed by Chile with developed countries. The article also examines if there are differences between the treaties signed by Chile and other “Southern” developing countries and those negotiated with “Northern” developed economies, and if sustainable development concerns are part of the negotiations of trade and investment agreements by Chile.

Evolución Jurídica de la Política Comercial de Chile. (Legal Development of Chile's Trade Policy)

This article examines the legal evolution of Chile's trade policy, starting on the second half of the twentieth century until today, with special emphasis on international treaties.

Labour Migration, Trade and Investment: From Fragmentation to Coherence

Trade, investment and migration are strongly intertwined, being three key factors in international production. Yet, law and regulation of the three has remained highly fragmented. Trade is regulated by the WTO on the multilateral level, and through preferential trade agreements on the regional and bilateral levels – it is fragmented and complex in its own right. Investment, on the other hand, is mainly regulated through bilateral investment treaties with no strong links to the regulation of trade or migration. And, finally, migration is regulated by a web of different international, regional and bilateral agreements which focus on a variety of different aspects of migration ranging from humanitarian to economic. The problems of institutional fragmentation in international law are well known. There is no organizational forum for coherent strategy-making on the multilateral level covering all three areas. Normative regulations may thus contradict each other. Trade regulation may bring about liberalization of access for service providers, but eventually faces problems in recruiting the best people from abroad. Investors may withdraw investment without being held liable for disruptions to labour and to the livelihood and infrastructure of towns and communities affected by disinvestment. Finally, migration policies do not seem to have a significant impact as long as trade policies and investment policies are not working in a way that is conducive to reducing migration pressure, as trade and investment are simply more powerful on the regulatory level than migration. This chapter addresses the question as to how fragmentation of the three fields could be reme-died and greater coherence between these three areas of factor allocation in international economic relations and law could be achieved. It shows that migration regulation on the international level is lagging behind that on trade and investment. Stronger coordination and consideration of migration in trade and investment policy, and stronger international cooperation in migration, will provide the foundations for a coherent international architecture in the field.

“Delendum est Imperium Ottomanorum“: War Crimes, Crimes against Humanity and the End of the Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire’s status as a full member of the international community of civilized states, which was bound by the rules of international law, had been challenged again and again during the formative period of the international law in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. When the First World War began, it was the first global military conflict, in which these rules of international law were put to the test. In the case of the Ottoman Empire quite a few questions were not yet settled, not least because the country was still bound by unequal treaties and because it had never ratified the renewed Hague Rules of Land Warfare of 1907, which it had only signed under reservations. Against this background the contribution will therefore focus on the debate amongst legal scholars on violations of the laws of war (and humanity) in regard to the Ottoman Empire during the First World War.

La ontología aristotélica a la luz del problema de la definición

El presente trabajo aborda la controversia actual sobre la continuidad del concepto de "substancia primera" en el pensamiento aristotélico. La discusión tiene como eje a los tratados Categorías y Metafísica Z-H, puesto que en el primero Aristóteles sostiene que los individuos son las substancias primeras, mientras que en el segundo reserva dicho título para la forma. Nuestra tesis es que ambos tratados no son incompatibles debido a que responden a interrogantes distintos: cuáles son los sujetos últimos de inherencia y cuál es la causa de dichas entidades. Las conclusiones obtenidas se sostienen en un análisis de la evolución de la concepción de la definición de un tratado a otro. En otras palabras, el problema de la definición es el hilo conductor utilizado para el abordaje de dichos tratados

Multiplicidad y unidad de la inteligencia en las Sentencias de Porfirio

Las Sentencias de Porfirio, que constituyen un compendio de las Enéadas de Plotino, incluyen una revisión del locus vexatus de platonismo del siglo III, que tiene su origen en la interpretación de un controvertido pasaje del Timeo, 39e. Revisaremos los antecedentes de Porfirio, bajo la influencia de Longino, y la polémica suscitada con Plotino y Amelio a su llegada a Roma. Su posterior "retractación" le lleva a aceptar que la Inteligencia se identifica con la multiplicidad de los inteligibles que intelige. La Inteligencia es sujeto inteligente y, al mismo tiempo, objeto inteligido, es decir, ejerce sobre sí misma su propia actividad intelectual. Nuestro análisis tratará de poner en conexión textos de las Sentencias, particularmente provenientes de la 43, con pasajes extraídos de los tratados plotinianos

Multiplicidad y unidad de la inteligencia en las Sentencias de Porfirio

Las Sentencias de Porfirio, que constituyen un compendio de las Enéadas de Plotino, incluyen una revisión del locus vexatus de platonismo del siglo III, que tiene su origen en la interpretación de un controvertido pasaje del Timeo, 39e. Revisaremos los antecedentes de Porfirio, bajo la influencia de Longino, y la polémica suscitada con Plotino y Amelio a su llegada a Roma. Su posterior "retractación" le lleva a aceptar que la Inteligencia se identifica con la multiplicidad de los inteligibles que intelige. La Inteligencia es sujeto inteligente y, al mismo tiempo, objeto inteligido, es decir, ejerce sobre sí misma su propia actividad intelectual. Nuestro análisis tratará de poner en conexión textos de las Sentencias, particularmente provenientes de la 43, con pasajes extraídos de los tratados plotinianos

La ontología aristotélica a la luz del problema de la definición

El presente trabajo aborda la controversia actual sobre la continuidad del concepto de "substancia primera" en el pensamiento aristotélico. La discusión tiene como eje a los tratados Categorías y Metafísica Z-H, puesto que en el primero Aristóteles sostiene que los individuos son las substancias primeras, mientras que en el segundo reserva dicho título para la forma. Nuestra tesis es que ambos tratados no son incompatibles debido a que responden a interrogantes distintos: cuáles son los sujetos últimos de inherencia y cuál es la causa de dichas entidades. Las conclusiones obtenidas se sostienen en un análisis de la evolución de la concepción de la definición de un tratado a otro. En otras palabras, el problema de la definición es el hilo conductor utilizado para el abordaje de dichos tratados

Multiplicidad y unidad de la inteligencia en las Sentencias de Porfirio

Las Sentencias de Porfirio, que constituyen un compendio de las Enéadas de Plotino, incluyen una revisión del locus vexatus de platonismo del siglo III, que tiene su origen en la interpretación de un controvertido pasaje del Timeo, 39e. Revisaremos los antecedentes de Porfirio, bajo la influencia de Longino, y la polémica suscitada con Plotino y Amelio a su llegada a Roma. Su posterior "retractación" le lleva a aceptar que la Inteligencia se identifica con la multiplicidad de los inteligibles que intelige. La Inteligencia es sujeto inteligente y, al mismo tiempo, objeto inteligido, es decir, ejerce sobre sí misma su propia actividad intelectual. Nuestro análisis tratará de poner en conexión textos de las Sentencias, particularmente provenientes de la 43, con pasajes extraídos de los tratados plotinianos

La ontología aristotélica a la luz del problema de la definición

El presente trabajo aborda la controversia actual sobre la continuidad del concepto de "substancia primera" en el pensamiento aristotélico. La discusión tiene como eje a los tratados Categorías y Metafísica Z-H, puesto que en el primero Aristóteles sostiene que los individuos son las substancias primeras, mientras que en el segundo reserva dicho título para la forma. Nuestra tesis es que ambos tratados no son incompatibles debido a que responden a interrogantes distintos: cuáles son los sujetos últimos de inherencia y cuál es la causa de dichas entidades. Las conclusiones obtenidas se sostienen en un análisis de la evolución de la concepción de la definición de un tratado a otro. En otras palabras, el problema de la definición es el hilo conductor utilizado para el abordaje de dichos tratados

Location choice in low-income countries : evidence from Japanese investments in East Asia

Unlike most existing studies, this paper examines the location choices of MNEs in developing countries. Specifically, we investigate the location choices of Japanese MNEs among East Asian developing countries by estimating a four-stage nested logit model at the province level. Noteworthy results of location elements are as follows. As is consistent with the mechanics of cheap labor-seeking FDI, Japanese MNEs are more likely to invest in locations with low income and low tariff rates on products from Japan. Also, accessibility to other locations and/or ports matters in attracting Japanese MNEs because it is crucial in importing materials and exporting their products. In addition, WTO membership and bilateral investment treaties are important because these contribute to the settlement of trade and investment disputes, which is more likely to be necessary in developing countries.