International Cooperation, Global Poverty and the Law

The central value of Economic and Social Rights (ESR) is the protection of people’s dignity and freedom from deprivation. While a lot of scholarly works have been devoted to States’ national obligation to realise the ESR of people domestically, only a few scholars have beamed research searchlight on the States’ obligation to cooperate internationally, towards the realisation of ESR abroad. There is an obligation on one nation to cooperate with another nation or nations towards addressing poverty in the latter nation(s). This book provides an interesting insight on this unexplored or under-explored area of ESR discourse, thereby broadening domestic and international scholarly engagements on the subject. As the coronavirus pandemic has shown, events have become so globalised that a problem anywhere can have a ripple effect everywhere, requiring a coordinated global cooperation for a solution. The pandemic has spurred further research interests on international cooperation in addressing global problems.
Thus, this book designs a cooperation model. It first of all engages with relevant sources to explore whether there is an obligation to cooperate in international law. It establishes the existence of this obligation and thereafter assesses the contours or contents of the obligation. The realisation of ESR can be resource intensive and without international cooperation and assistance, the realisation will always be outside the reach of developing countries. The book canvasses for an effective deployment of international cooperation and assistance to herald a de facto realisation of ESR in developing countries. Drawing on several normative instruments such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), the book adopts Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) to locate and develop an obligation of international cooperation, between developed countries and developing countries on several issues such as climate change, corruption, international trade and investment which impact on the realisation of ESR in developing countries. The choice of TWAIL as a methodological tool will help to assess the impact of colonialism and its associated ills on the realisation of ESR in the developing countries. The book problematises the issue of globalisation, which has systematically dismantled national walls, to argue for a global cooperation to address the challenge of ESR realisation.