Sixty years ago, Pakistan and West Germany inked the first Bilateral Investment Treaty. This agreement paved the way for a glut of dispute settlement and arbitration systems, and other appendages of so-called “trade” policy, that have exploited unequal power relations to increase inequalities between and within countries.
Six months ago, Pakistan was hit with a USD $6 billion fine for allegedly infringing on the profit making opportunities of a multinational mining corporation. This fine was leveled by an unelected three-person court within the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, part of the World Bank Group, and one of the many enablers of unchecked corporate power unleashed sixty years back.
It is clear that these trade and investment policies no longer even benefit the signatory countries, but rather line the pockets of global elites at the expense of ordinary people and the planet we share. Backlash to these policies has waxed and waned, peaking twenty years ago with the Seattle WTO protests and again reemerging in the past decade, with opposition to status quo trade policies now part of political campaigns across the political spectrum .
