(2023) 4 TWAIL Review 35-59
ISSN 2563-6693
Published under a Creative Commons licence. 

This paper argues that international economic law functions as a tool of imperialist domination by advancing global capitalism. It uses the case study of the COVID-19 pandemic to illustrate how institutions such as the World Trade Organisation and laws such as the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights have sacrificed the human rights of peoples in the Global South, such as the right to health and the right to benefit from scientific progress at the altar of corporate profitability. Such laws and institutions have constrained the economic sovereignty of these nations by disallowing them from acting autonomously in the best interests of their populations whilst subjecting them to rules that are inherently disadvantageous to them and in the formulation of which they have often been excluded. The consent of the Global South to such institutions and laws is manufactured through a combination of coercive mechanisms that weaponise the limited economic leverage of these countries as well as the ideological allure of notions such as free trade and economic liberalisation premised on ostensibly neutral ideas such as freedom and equality. The result is that these formerly colonised nations, although independent and sovereign under the Westphalian model, remain at the mercy of private capital and governments in the Global North.