© Michael Kappeler/Agence France-PresseActivists work on a float showing Angela Merkel lighting a TTIP-bomb during a demonstration in Berlin, 9 October 2015
The clause in the EU-US trade contract will threaten our right to health, a decent wage and a healthy environment
"A revolution against the law"
That's how UN independent expert Alfred de Zayas describes the controversial and increasingly used 'investor-state dispute settlement' mechanism which enables corporations to sue states for lost profits -
including those yet to be made.The UK government want this 'corporate court' included in the secretly negotiated EU-US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (
TTIP). This is despite widespread public opposition that resulted in the biggest ever response to a European Commission public consultation: 97% of people called for investor-state dispute settlement to be removed from TTIP.
TTIP is promoted as being focused on the
"shared values" of the USA and EU, including "upholding and promoting human rights". However,
the USA and EU prefer to protect corporations from human rights law; they were the strongest opponents of a UN move to create a binding mechanism for holding corporations accountable to international human rights law supported by 80 countries and 400 organisations.In June, an unprecedented 10 UN independent experts released a joint statement outlining their fears for human rights in the 'new generation' trade deals including TTIP.
So, in honour of Human Rights Day, here are three ways that investor-state dispute settlement cases have led to the trading of human rights for profit.
Comment: The reality is that Walmart destroys local businesses, which puts a huge strain on local economies. When behemoth corporations enter smaller cities and towns - which make up a large portion of Walmart's store chain base - then small local businesses in the area suffer immensely and all too often go out of business. When Walmart claims that it brings "new jobs to local communities" what it's saying is that it brings menial unskilled low paying jobs that can obtained by the people who no longer enjoy the benefits of working for small local businesses because those small local businesses were forced to close their doors due to Walmart. In other words, Walmart is simply pointing out the end result of the devastation it causes.
Further, Walmart is notoriously anti-union, anti-living wage, anti-benefits, and essentially amounts to a psychopathic operation run amok - the company operates strictly for the benefit of its shareholders with little if any regard for the workers in the company that make it all possible.