Trade and Development in International Law

The intersection between trade and development in international law appeared in the wake of the decolonization movement, in the second half of the 20th century. Newly independent states joined the older Latin American republics in the shared awareness of their underdevelopment and identified themselves as the Third World, most notably after the landmark Bandung conference of 1955. Developing countries soon gained majority in the UN General Assembly and tried to reshape the rules of international law in order to restore fairness in the multilateral trading system. Its governing instrument, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), was perceived as fundamentally flawed since it did not address development and the typical economic issues associated with it. The organization of the first UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in 1964 and its establishment as an organ of the General Assembly were instrumental in the proposal of rules to take developing countries into account in international trade law. The GATT incorporated special and differential treatment (S&DT) provisions for developing countries, and other legal regimes were created to deal with issues of specific interest to them, such as international trade in commodities. This process culminated with the attempt by developing countries to establish a New International Economic Order (NIEO) in the 1970s. The NIEO agenda was dominant on the international stage and in legal thinking on trade and development until the early 1990s. International recognition of a right to development connected the topic of trade and development with the field of human rights. The establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995 and globalization profoundly shook the foundations of the rules governing trade and development. It marked a paradigmatic shift in international law, where trade liberalization came largely to be seen as the key to development. Renewed critical theories emerged fleshing out Third World approaches to international law, dealing notably with trade-related issues. The topic of trade and development remains relevant in early-21st-century international law, as exemplified by the Doha Development Round of multilateral trade negotiations and by the fact that most WTO members still identify as developing countries in the world trading system. The need to further address the issues faced by developing countries remains pressing. The topic of trade and development focuses on North-South or South-South trade relations and must be disambiguated from the concept of sustainable development. The latter does not deal specifically with developing countries and refers to development that meets current needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own.