{"id":13893,"date":"2015-10-28T06:47:05","date_gmt":"2015-10-28T11:47:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=13893"},"modified":"2015-10-28T06:47:05","modified_gmt":"2015-10-28T11:47:05","slug":"current-trade-treaties-a-revolution-against-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=13893","title":{"rendered":"Current trade treaties: \u201ca revolution against law\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<header class=\"entry-header\">\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.localfutures.org\/current-trade-treaties-a-revolution-against-international-law\/\" target=\"_blank\">Current trade treaties: \u201ca revolution against law\u201d<\/a><\/h3>\n<p class=\"entry-meta\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-9046 alignleft\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-11032\" src=\"http:\/\/www.localfutures.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/trade-cartoon-snippet-300x240.jpg\" alt=\"trade cartoon snippet\" width=\"300\" height=\"240\" \/>A respected human-rights expert at the United Nations, Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, has joined the global movement opposing trade treaties like TPP and TTIP. And he has novel and powerful legal arguments.<\/p>\n<p>In international law, de Zayas says, there is a hierarchy of agreements, and at the top is the UN Charter: \u201cin case of conflict between the provisions of the UN Charter and any other treaty, the Charter prevails.\u201d In other words,\u00a0trade treaties that lead to a violation of human rights \u2014 or breach any other obligation set out in the UN Charter \u2014 are legally invalid. Most countries have signed onto human rights treaties, but \u201cthey have also entered into trade and investment agreements that hinder, delay or render impossible the fulfillment of their human rights treaty obligations.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>De Zayas is especially concerned about Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) clauses, which allow corporations to sue governments over laws or regulations that might diminish expected profits. Such mechanisms, he says, \u201cactually constitute an attack on the very essence of sovereignty and self-determination, which are founding principles of the United Nations.\u201d In fact, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights requires these kinds of disputes to be decided by independent, transparent and accountable tribunals.\u00a0\u201cAllowing three private arbitrators to disregard international and national law \u2026 is tantamount to a revolution against law.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>De Zayas notes that of the 608 known arbitration awards, many \u201chave overridden national law and hindered States in the sovereign determination of fiscal and budgetary policy, labour, health and environmental regulation, and have had adverse human rights impacts\u2026 including a \u2018chilling effect\u2019 with regard to the exercise of democratic governance.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Current trade treaties: \u201ca revolution against law\u201d A respected human-rights expert at the United Nations, Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, has joined the global movement opposing trade treaties like TPP and TTIP. And he has novel and powerful legal arguments. In international law, de Zayas says, there is a hierarchy of agreements, and at the top is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[1795,9964,6367,7711,804,805,10306,1132,822,9390],"class_list":["post-13893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-liberty","tag-human-rights","tag-ids","tag-investor-state-dispute-resolution","tag-local-futures","tag-tpp","tag-trade","tag-trade-treaties","tag-ttip","tag-un","tag-un-charter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13893"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13893\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13894,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13893\/revisions\/13894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}