Book Review (Spotlight Weekly)

A Perspective On Globalization, International Justice and Right to Development: Controversies and Anachronisms

By Pravakar Adhikari

Monograph
Published by: South Asian Development Law Center (2003)
pp 59; Bibliography

Questioning all the classical belief and common rhetoric prevalent in international law in the context of justice and development, a new monograph by Dr. Ahmed Jehani and Dr. Kishor Uprety, in a relatively sharp but succinct fashion, strives to expose the contradictions within the current international system. This current system is, according to Jehani and Uprety, governed by a series of rules introduced as tools to serve specific interests of some countries and corporations. But, in serving those interests, argue the authors, the system has failed to ensure equality and justice for many countries. This monograph, albeit its unconventional but scholarly nature, also attempts to further identify the link between law and development, in addition to raising concerns about the current process of international lawmaking, which has failed to generate confidence amongst many actors and thus has become unable to pursue the ideal of development for the international community as a whole.

Divided into ten short chapters, the monograph, after a brief general introduction, attempts to present the debate and tension that exists in the context of development between the two radically divided worlds: one affluent in everything and the other deprived of everything. In so doing, the monograph, sometimes with a more than warranted radicalism, shows the inherent anachronism in the international system, the confusion created by the trade and human rights interplay and the classical oligopoly that exists in the international law-making. The anachronisms have, in reality, not only failed to ensure economic growth, but also engendered discrepancies and injustices. The authors, however, consider the world to be bound by the rule of a generalized interdependence, which warrants a “just legal system” premised on a right-based sustainable development approach. This need, indeed, prompts changes in the understanding of what international law making should be all about, a model for which, although not fully tested, has been alluded to in the monograph.

The monograph is full of examples. Only one or two can be noted however. In the context of international commerce, for instance, the monograph depicts the problems of rule-based regime of global trade, ostensibly through consensus, but which prompts acrimony and grievance from many members. The unequal access of different countries to the negotiating process and in the harvesting of benefits is clear and obvious. Countries outside of the economic and political mainstream have practically no benefit, except those that are purely theoretical. The substantial volume of global trade, overwhelmingly dominated by multinational corporations, are accorded a systematically privileged access to the negotiating process, leading to their ability to influence the international trade agenda, at the detriment of the rest of the world.

The second and probably the most interesting question raised by Dr. Jehani and Dr. Uprety is the omnipresence of political and security concerns of some members of the international community, in the international law making. For the authors, most if not all law-making is geared towards serving the security and political interests of few countries, not towards attempting to ensure global justice. Indeed, international legal scholarship, which set in motion a discourse on rules, premises and fundamentals, in 1648, through the Treaty of Westphalia, has, according to the authors, “expanded its coverage but has also done so by a process of thinning trivialization, which has exposed its inability to do any more than reenact the tensions, which gave it birth”. This accounts, according to the authors, “for the indeterminate and anachronistic nature of contemporary international legal scholarship, which fails to guarantee equity and justice and confuses the discourse on development.”

This monograph is certainly an interesting addition to the vast literature in the field of law and development. It raises some very valid questions that, although not acceptable to all, cannot be ignored by those fancying new dimensions and approaches to stretch the study of international law and development far beyond.

(Adhikari is the Head of International Law Department, Faculty of Law, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal)