Speaker Series - Reform and Retrenchment: International Economic Law Reforms and the Reproduction of Injustice?

The discipline of international economic law – particularly in subfields of international trade law and international investment law – are at an important juncture. Pre-existing international economic crisis in Global South and Global North alike have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the debt crisis that it has triggered. On the one hand, questions relating to the reform of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and its dispute settlement regime dominate the landscape of debates in the field of international trade law. Quite apart from the process and issues to focus on, a central question that the reform of the WTO and its dispute settlement process confronts relates to the plight of developing countries. Most developing countries in the WTO remain at the margins of economic development that is engineered by international trade. On the other hand, although the international investment law regime has committed to procedural reforms through the ICSID and the UNCITRAL Working Group III process, substantive reforms that are critical to the issues that confront developing countries also remain at the periphery. While the Multilateral Investment Court proposed by the European Union Member States is substantive, questions remain about the implications for African states. Crucially, there is a dissonance in the reform agenda at the multilateral or international levels in comparison to the regional/sub-regional levels.

Crisis moments offer an opportunity to develop a meaningful reform agenda or can result in an entrenchment of powerful interests. Failure to confront crisis in the international legal order may reproduce injustice in international economic relations. The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the urgency for international economic justice – especially in relation to sovereign debt and climate change, among other thematic areas. Notably, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated sovereign debt crisis, deepened inequalities, and widened the economic gap between the powerful Global North and the poor Global South countries. In the context of sovereign debt, the structural and systemic challenges that constitute the unequal socio-economic relations and lack of international economic justice in the least and developing countries in Africa are not new.

Debt imperialism is arguably one of the greatest impediments to the development of the underdeveloped. The phenomenon of debt remains one of the core legacies of colonialism. While issues of debt unsustainability, corruption, odious debts, poor management and accountability regimes, and overall lack of transparency with respect to the debt profile of developing countries compound their economic position, imagining solutions for these challenges cannot be undertaken in the context of the national responses alone. Debt crisis straddles various aspects of international economic law’s injustice dilemma with broad implications for African peoples. The linkage between debt and climate action is essential to this session and its overall claim for a reform that does not reproduce and entrench an unjust international economic order. In this regard, the capacity of Global South countries to address climate change and take climate action will be significantly hindered if their debt crisis is not addressed simultaneously as part of a broader reform of international economic law.

Scholarship on international economic law and international financial institutions have not focused enough on how the process of reforms from both fields may be coordinated to avoid an unjust outcome. Even less critical focus has been devoted to the role of African development banks in addressing debt crisis and debt sustainability in Africa. Unless the international economic order (international financial architecture and international economic law) is fundamentally reformed in ways that address the challenges of the Global South and the transnational capture of capital and regime by powerful corporations and states, international economic justice will continue to elude African states and their counterparts in the Global South.

This session will address this coordination gap, and the potential for entrenchment of international economic injustice by using debt and climate change as critical points of substantive analysis of the predicament of the subaltern. Dr. Akinkugbe argues that the continuities of imperialist lending harms and represses the capacity of African countries to address pressing socio-economic and human rights issues – including climate action. In turn, reform and retrenchment of an unjust international economic order cannot be undertaken without a focus on the colonial legacies and continuities that are reproduced in the emerging international economic order.

The session situates sovereign debt crisis and debt unsustainability in Africa in the historical narratives, structural adjustment programs, debt relief packages and links them to how imperialist technologies of governance are reproduced in contemporary sovereign debt diplomacy. In addition, it articulates the climate justice implications that arises from unsustainable debt for African countries. The session will contend that the intertwined nature of the socio-economic implications of unsustainable debt extends to environmental issues. As such, the environmental and climate justice concerns of unsustainable debt must be a necessary part of the conversation.