This book will take the reader through the past, the present, and into the future of the flagship institution of the international customs community: the World Customs Organization (WCO). The purpose is to present to the reader, in a comprehensive, orderly, and synthetic manner, the enormous contributions that this prestigious and recognized institution has been making to the secure growth of global international trade. In the development of the text, special consideration has been given to the relevant instruments in day-to-day customs work, which constitute the bases of the WCO (the Harmonized System Convention, the Revised Kyoto Convention, and the SAFE Framework of Standards, among many others), as well as those issues that are currently of specific interest to the global customs community (cross-border e-commerce, trade facilitation, and authorized economic operator, to mention but a few), trying to reconcile the various practical aspects of customs operations with their theoretical underpinnings. In the final part, the book turns to the future of customs, analyzing the most pressing challenges presented by technological advances, including the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, 3D printing, and blockchain. In short, this book will be of great interest to all foreign trade operators, mainly to customs officials, customs brokers, carriers and international forwarding agents, managers of importing and exporting companies, as well as all those (professionals and students) who wish to deepen their knowledge of the exciting world of customs and international trade.

International Economic Law and African Development discusses international perspectives on African law and economic development in the light of broader globalisation imperatives. It is the third in what can loosely be described as a series on Africa and gobalisation by the Mandela Institute (the first two being Laurence Boulle (ed) Globalisation and Governance (Siber Ink 2011) and Emmanuel T Laryea, Nokuhle Madolo and Franziska Sucker (eds) International Economic Law – Voices of Africa (Siber Ink 2012)). The conversation on law and African economies continues in this book, in the light of Africa’s increasingly sophisticated participation in all facets of the contemporary world. It offers a collection of essays from Africans, whether living on the continent or abroad, complemented by the writings of empathetic non-Africans writing from an African perspective. They are metaphorically rooted in African soil not only in terms of subject-matter but also in terms of the perspectives they provide. African contributions to the debates on global themes may presage greater African engagement in the global political economy in the future. The Mandela Institute is a centre within the School of Law at the University of the Witwatersrand and undertakes teaching, research and capacity development in different areas with particular reference to international trade, investment law and global finance.

This Open Access book analyses the emergence of Russia as a global food power and what it means for global food trade. Russia's strategy for food production and trade has changed significantly since the end of the Soviet period, and this is the first book to take account of Russia's rise as a food power and the global implications of that rise. It includes food trade policy and practice, and developments in regional food trade. This book will be of interest to academics and practitioners in agricultural economics, international trade, and international food trade.

This book provides a novel in-depth study of the early pandemic response policy at the intersection of political economy and law. It explores: (1) whether the responses to COVID-19 were democratically accountable; (2) the ways in which new surveillance and enforcement techniques were adopted; (3) the new monetary and fiscal policies which were implemented; (4) the ways in which employed and unemployed persons were differently impacted by the new policies; and (5) how companies were economically sustained through the pandemic. A compelling look at what happens to societies when disaster strikes, this book will be of interest to legal scholars, political scientists and economists.

In this work, Amrita Narlikar argues that, contrary to common assumption, modern-day politics displays a surprising paradox: poverty - and the powerlessness with which it is associated - has emerged as a political tool and a formidable weapon in international negotiation. The success of poverty narratives, however, means that their use has not been limited to the neediest. Focusing on behaviours and outcomes in a particularly polarising area of bargaining - international trade - and illustrating wider applications of the argument, Narlikar shows how these narratives have been effectively used. Yet, she also sheds light on how indiscriminate overuse and misuse increasingly run the risk of adverse consequences for the system at large, and devastating repercussions for the weakest members of society. Narlikar advances a theory of agency and empowerment by focusing on the life-cycles of narratives, and concludes by offering policy-relevant insights on how to construct winning and sustainable narratives.

The ICSID Reports provide the only comprehensive collection of the arbitral awards and decisions given under the auspices of the World Bank??'s International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes or pursuant to other multilateral or bilateral investment treaties. These decisions make an important contribution to the growing body of jurisprudence on international investment. The series also includes arbitration under the Additional Facility to the ICSID Convention which has increased in recent years, most notably in relation to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Volume 7 of the ICSID Reports brings the series substantially up to date and includes the decision of 28 May 2003 on the supplementation and rectification of the annulment decision in CAA and Vivendi Universal v. Argentina, the award of 26 June 2003 in Loewen v. USA and the rulings and awards in Pope and Talbot, Inc. v. Canada.

The Common Concern of Humankind today is central to efforts to bring about enhanced international cooperation in fields including, but not limited to, climate change. This book explores the expression's potential as a future legal principle. It sets out the origins of Common Concern, its differences to other common interest legal principles, and expounds the potential normative structure and effects of the principle, applying an approach of carrots and sticks in realizing goals defined as a Common Concern. Individual chapters test the principle in different legal fields, including climate technology diffusion, marine plastic pollution, human rights enforcement, economic inequality, migration, and monetary and financial stability. They confirm that basic obligations under the principle of 'Common Concern of Humankind' comprise not only that of international cooperation and duties to negotiate, but also of unilateral duties to act to enhance the potential of public international law to produce appropriate public goods.

A new international instrument is needed to address access to interoperability standards and standards-essential intellectual property, which are critical to maintaining technological advancement and promoting cost-effective solutions for consumers. Applying law and economics methodologies, Simon Brinsmead systematically explores how international and domestic law deals with these matters. This important book includes an examination of the technical and economic nature of interoperability standards; a detailed analysis of the issues arising under intellectual property and competition law; an analysis of whether liability or exclusive property rules should apply with respect to interoperability standards and SEIP; and consideration of feasible international approaches. Finally, Brinsmead includes a draft of his proposed international soft law instrument as a starting point for future discussions in the field. Of interest to lawyers, regulators and scholars, this work offers a meaningful contribution to international governance, harmonization of laws and technological advancement.

This Handbook aims to provide practical guidance on good treaty practice. It presents a range of examples from the practice of several States and international organisations and explains the actions that need to be taken to create a new treaty, bring it into force, operate it, amend it and wind it up, on both the international and the domestic plane. It also explores what constitutes good treaty practice, and develops generic principles or criteria against which to evaluate these examples. It provides a useful analytical tool to enable each government and international organisation to identify and develop the best treaty practice for their circumstances, recognising that one size does not necessarily fit all. It will be of interest to those working with treaties and treaty procedures in governments, international organisations and legal practice, as well as legal academics and students wishing to gain insight into the realities of treaty practice.

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is seen primarily as an international human rights instrument. However, the Declaration also encompasses cultural, social and economic rights. Taken in the context of international trade and investment, the UN Declaration is a valuable tool to support economic self-determination of Indigenous peoples. This volume explores the emergence of Indigenous peoples' participation in international trade and investment, as well as how it is shaping legal instruments in environment and trade, intellectual property and traditional knowledge. One theme that is explored is agency. From amicus interventions at the World Trade Organization to developing a future precedent for a 'Trade and Indigenous Peoples Chapter', Indigenous peoples are asserting their right to patriciate in decision-making. The authors, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous experts on trade and investment legal, provide needed ideas and recommendations for governments, academia and policy thinkers to achieve economic reconciliation.

This analysis of how multi-level networked governance has superseded the liberal system of interdependent states focuses on the role of law in mediating power and shows how lawyers have shaped the main features of capitalism, especially the transnational corporation. It covers the main institutions regulating the world economy, including the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO and a myriad of other bodies, and introduces the reader to key regulatory arenas: corporate governance, competition policy, investment protection, anti-corruption rules, corporate codes and corporate liability, international taxation, avoidance and evasion and the campaign to combat them, the offshore finance system, international financial regulation and its contribution to the financial crisis, trade rules and their interaction with standards especially for food safety and environmental protection, the regulation of key services (telecommunications and finance), intellectual property and the tensions between exclusive private rights and emergent forms of common and collective property in knowledge.

This is an accessible guide to the vocabulary used in trade negotiations. It explains some 3,000 terms and concepts in simple language. Its main emphasis is on the multilateral trading system represented by the agreements under the World Trade Organization (WTO). In addition it covers many of the trade-related activities, outcomes and terms used in other international organizations, such as the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the OECD. The last decade has seen considerable attention devoted to trade and investment facilitation, sustainability and the formation of free-trade areas in all parts of the world. This dictionary allocates generous space to the vocabulary associated with such developments. It offers clear explanations, for example, of the concepts used in the administration of preferential rules of origin. More recently, trade facilitation has received considerable attention. Additional areas covered include emerging trade issues and issues based particularly on developing-country concerns.

Preferential Services Liberalization offers the first, comprehensive analysis of the conditions that the World Trade Organization sets for preferential trade agreements (PTAs) in the area of services. Johanna Jacobsson provides an in-depth analysis of the relevant GATS rules, puts forward a practical method to analyze services PTAs, and applies the method to services agreements concluded by the EU. The result is a detailed examination of the legal criteria for services PTAs and methods to study them, combined with a better understanding of the level of liberalization reached by the EU and its member states. This book does go beyond the EU in analyzing the implications that multi-level governance has for international services liberalization. It proposes a new approach to study services commitments of any federal state and argues that lower levels of government should receive more attention in international negotiations over services trade.

This book illustrates the challenges that regulators and policy makers have faced in the transition from the 'old' network industries to the new digital ecosystem. It succinctly describes the evolution of digital economy, its main actors, notably global digital platforms, as well as its interactions, interdependences, and trade-offs. Eventually, it proposes insights about why public rules are needed, what kind of rules could be more effective, fair, and efficient, and who should pose and enforce them. The book is opened by an introduction, dealing with Digital Transformation, Big Techs, and Public Policies, which provides a general conceptual and thematic framework to the following analysis but could be also read as a stand-alone paper. The following chapters are grouped in two parts: I. The Evolution of Digital Markets and Digital Rights, and II. Regulating Big Tech's Impact on Market and Society. The secondary title - the European approach - has a twofold meaning. It highlights the fact that this work has a clear focus on EU law and policy - although the economic and institutional issues addressed are global phenomena, common to all world's economies. In addition, it also underlines that European digital policy is not yet complete and effective. This book intends to provide a small contribution to the ongoing policy making process, as well as to the wider academic and policy debate.

The knowledge economy, a seeming wonder for the world, has caused unintended harms that threaten peace and prosperity and undo international cooperation and the international rule of law. The world faces threats of war, pandemics, growing domestic political discord, climate change, disruption of international trade and investment, immigration, and the pollution of cyberspace, just as international law increasingly falls short as a tool for managing these challenges. Prosperity dependent on meritocracy, open borders, international economic freedom, and a wide-open Internet has met its limits, with international law one of the first casualties. Any effective response to these threats must reflect the pathway by which these perils arrive. Part of the answer to these challenges, Paul B. Stephan argues, must include a re-conception of international law as arising out of pragmatic and limited experiments by states, rather than as grand projects to remake and redeem the world.

In recent decades, South East Asia has become one of the world's most popular destinations for foreign investment. The member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have employed varying modalities to pursue first security and then economic cooperation. This book explores regional law and governance in ASEAN through the lens of its regulation of foreign investment. It adopts a new framework to identify the unique ontological autonomy of the ASEAN Investment Regime beyond a simple aggregation of its individual member states. It deploys a sociology-led approach (especially constructivism) and emphasizes ideational factors (such as culture and norms) that guide state actions from within. The book explores the manner in which ASEAN's history and culture have fundamentally shaped its foreign investment policies, leading to outcomes that often depart fundamentally from the external structure and script of Global Investment Law.

It is more than twenty-five years since the World Bank Convention on the Settlement of Investment Disputes entered into force. These reports present in a single, comprehensive series all decisions of ICSID tribunals in the public domain, as well as the decisions of national courts relating to such proceedings.

A detailed examination of the GATT regime for international trade, discussing the negotiating record, policy background, economic rationale, and case law. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was created alongside other towering achievements of the post-World War II era, including the United Nations, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. GATT, the first successful agreement to generate multilateral trade liberalization, became the principal institution to administer international trade for the next six decades. In this book, Petros Mavoidis offers detailed examination of the GATT regime for international trade, discussing the negotiating record, policy background, economic rationale, and case law. Mavroidis offers a substantive first chapter that provides a detailed historical background to GATT that stretches from the 1927 World Economic Conference through Bretton Woods and the Atlantic Charter. Each of the following chapters examines the disciplines agreed to, their negotiating record, their economic rationale, and subsequent practice. Mavroidis focuses on cases that have influenced the prevailing understanding of the norm, as well as on literature that has contributed to its interpretation, and the final outcome. In particular, he examines quantitative restrictions and tariffs; the most favored nation clause (MFN), the cornerstone of the GATT edifice; preferential trade agreements and special treatment for products originating in developing countries; domestic instruments; and exceptions to the obligations assumed under GATT. This book's companion volume examines World Trade Organization (WTO) agreements regulating trade in goods.

This book outlines the principles behind the international law of foreign investment. The main focus is on the law governed by bilateral and multilateral investment treaties. It traces the purpose, context, and evolution of the clauses and provisions characteristic of contemporary investment treaties, and analyses the case law, interpreting the issues raised by standard clauses. Particular consideration is given to broad treaty-rules whose understanding in practice has mainly been shaped by their interpretation and application by international tribunals. In addition, the book introduces the dispute settlement mechanisms for enforcing investment law, outlining the operation of Investor vs State arbitration.
Combining a systematic analytical study of the texts and principles underlying investment law with a jurisprudential analysis of the case law arising in international tribunals, this book offers an ideal introduction to the principles of international investment law and arbitration, for students or practitioners alike.

Technical standards are ubiquitous in the modern networked economy. They allow products made and sold by different vendors to interoperate with little to no consumer effort and enable new market entrants to innovate on top of established technology platforms. This groundbreaking volume, edited by Jorge L. Contreras, assesses and analyzes the legal aspects of technical standards and standardization. Bringing together more than thirty leading international scholars, advocates, and policymakers, it focuses on two of the most contentious and critical areas pertaining to standards today in key jurisdictions around the world: antitrust/competition law and patent law. (A subsequent volume will focus on international trade, copyright, and administrative law.) This comprehensive, detailed examination sheds new light on the standards that shape the global technology marketplace and will serve as an indispensable tool for scholars, practitioners, judges, and policymakers everywhere.

The climate surrounding foreign investment law is one of controversy and change, and with implications for human rights and environmental protection, foreign investment law has gained widespread public attention and visibility. This fully updated edition of Sornarajah's classic text offers thought-provoking analysis of the law in historical, political and economic contexts, capturing leading trends and charting the possible course of future developments. It takes into account the newer types of treaties that establish a regulatory space for states and moves away from inflexible investment protection, exploring the newly created defences relating to environment, human rights, indigenous rights and other areas ending the fragmentation of the law. It looks at the current debates on legitimacy of the system and current efforts at reform. Suitable for postgraduate and undergraduate students, The International Law on Foreign Investment is essential reading for anyone specialising in the law of foreign investments.

Technical standards like USB, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth are ubiquitous in the modern networked economy. They allow products made and sold by different vendors to interoperate with little to no consumer effort and enable new market entrants to innovate on top of established technology platforms. This groundbreaking volume, edited by Jorge L. Contreras, assesses and analyzes legal aspects of technical standards and standardization beyond those covered in its companion volume (patents, competition, and antitrust). Bringing together leading international experts, advocates, and policymakers, it focuses on key areas of technical standardization law including administrative, trade, copyright, trademark, and certification law. This comprehensive, detailed examination sheds new light on the standards that shape the global technology marketplace and will serve as an indispensable tool for scholars, practitioners, judges, and policymakers everywhere.

The 1997 Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction (CWC) bans an entire category of weapons of mass destruction. The CWC has now been in force for more than a decade, and has achieved almost universal adherence. To achieve its objectives, the CWC established the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). This second edition of OPCW: The Legal Texts brings together the text of the Convention, the interpretative decisions and understandings reached by the organs of the OPCW, policies, rules of procedure, regulations, the conclusions of the two reviews undertaken by the States Parties of the operation of the Convention and key background texts. The volume provides a comprehensive overview of the Convention regime, as it has developed over the last decade.

The World Trade Organization's General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) sets out a framework and rules for the liberalization of international trade in services. Paragraph 2(a) of the GATS Annex on Financial Services is generally known as the Prudential Carve-Out (PCO). Notwithstanding GATS obligations, it allows WTO Members to pursue prudential regulatory objectives. This book studies the GATS PCO in light of its negotiating history and economic rationale as well as PCOs in all preferential trade agreements notified to the WTO Secretariat up to the summer of 2017. The author clarifies the state of play of international cooperation on financial services regulation; provides a current understanding of the GATS PCO; analyses how PCOs are drafted in preferential trade agreements and, finally, he seeks to understand whether alternative approaches to the mainstream understanding of the PCO are possible and suggests options for reform.