A/HRC/33/40 African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, are binding treaty obligations, not mere pledges. 17. It appears that investors and transnational corporations understand human rights narrowly as the right to trade, the right to property and the right to profits. That perspective is supported by invoking the “laws of the market”,26 a kind of ideological fundamentalism or groupthink reflected in a speech by the former WTO Director Pascal Lamy, who argued at a United Nations Institute for Training and Research conference on 26 September 2010 that “trade ensures concrete realization of human rights”.27 The “right to competition” is also a favourite neo-liberal “right”. But trade, property and competition are not ends in themselves and must be seen in the context of other rights and subject to reasonable regulation. Competition presupposes a level playing field, which often necessitates affirmative action to correct imbalances. Competition without solidarity is predator behaviour, especially when competition is rigged in favour of mega-corporations and monopolies.28 IV. Primacy of the international human rights treaty regime 18. All potential States parties to the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement and the Trade in Services Agreement are bound by the international human rights treaty regime and most are parties to universal and regional human rights treaties, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Social Charter. Pacta sunt servanda requires States to fulfil their human rights treaty obligations in good faith and prohibits them from entering into agreements that would delay, circumvent, undermine or make impossible the fulfilment of their human rights treaty obligations. However, discussing the human rights impacts of trade with government officials, trade representatives and corporate lobbyists, the Independent Expert realized that they did not immediately perceive the human rights dimensions. Hence the following summary of human rights treaty provisions that have been or can be adversely affected. A. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 19. Article 1 provides that all peoples have the right of self-determination, to freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development. They have the right to freely dispose of their natural wealth and resources and may not be deprived of their means of subsistence. States parties have an obligation to promote the realization of the right of self-determination and cannot thwart it by entering into commercial agreements that effectively deprive peoples of their natural resources or 26 27 28 6 Words conceal more than they elucidate. “The market” is not a law of natural science, but a bundle of power relations. When a dogmatist invokes as a magic phrase “the laws of the market”, he means what the mega-corporations want. “Investment” may or may not be beneficial. While the funding of long-term investment in socially useful activities must be promoted, the management of existing assets to milk them for rents, dividends and capital gains hurts society. Wealth extraction is different from wealth creation. Market fundamentalism and free-trade-populism constitute a utopian, millenarian faith in the “invisible hand” of the market, and in a non-existent “trickle down” effect. www.wto.org/english/news_e/sppl_e/sppl172_e.htm. Ha-Joon Chang, “Kicking away the ladder”, Foreign Policy In Focus (Silver City, NM: Interhemispheric Resource Center, December 2003). GE.16-11938