Case studies

It is generally recognized that bilateral agreements, especially between a developing and a developed country, are not the best option and that multilateral negotiations and agreements are preferable as they are less discriminatory and allow a better bargaining position for the developing countries.

There are concerns that bilateral and regional trade agreements are incomplete, unequal, or counter-productive that even those who support the recent proliferation of the agreements believe must be addressed. The volume of agreements activity stretches negotiation capacities to their limit, and in the case of developing countries, prevents them from actively participating in all proceedings.

Additionally, there is a fear that in bilateral agreements formed outside the WTO, developing countries do not have the power of collective bargaining to negotiate in their best interest. For example, Chile concluded an agreement with the US in which it committed to lowering tariffs on agriculture products and deregulating investment, but could not gain any concessions from the US regarding farm subsidies.

‘Our planet is wrapped in a thick weft of international, regional and bilateral economic and financial agreements and treaties that have subordinated or taken the place of the basic tools of international and national human rights law (including the right to a safe environment), national Constitutions, economic legislation directed to national development and labor and social laws that tend to alleviate inequalities and exclusion.

This weft, as a consequence of the application of “the most favourable treatment” “national treatment” and “most favoured nation” clauses, that appear in almost every treaty, works as communicating glasses system, that allows neo-liberal policies circulate freely on a planetary scale and get into States, where they disintegrate national economies and provoke grave social harms.

All this involves the primacy of capital rights over democratic and human rights of peoples. Liberalisation and privatisation policies are consolidating –as a legally binding legal system-. It is a matter of making these policies non reverted through international agreements. It is the regression to a sort of feudal or corporative law, opposed to national and international public law, that works in the exclusive interest of the big transnational capital and those of rich states and to the detriment of fundamental rights of the so-called peripheral states and their peoples'.

(From Joint Statement submitted by the Europe Center – Third World, non-governmental organization with general consultative status and the American Association of Jurists. Commission on Human Rights, 56th period of sessions – July 26 to August 13, 2004. See full text . (Pdf format)