Revisiting the Charter on Economic Rights and Duties of States:

A Blueprint for Decolonial International Economic Law?

George Forji Amin

 

ABSTRACT: Fifty years after the adoption of the Charter on Economic Rights and Duties of States (CERDS) by the UN General Assembly in 1974, the international legal order continues to grapple with tensions between sovereign equality and structural inequality. While the charter was initially envisaged as the pillar of a New International Economic Order (NIEO) with bold normative ambition, it has nonetheless since been eclipsed by a global order which is entrenched in various asymmetries and inequalities: wealth, power, and legal influence.

 

This paper revisits CERDS as a historical relic and normative blueprint, arguing that it still provides a feasible foundation for reimagining international economic law today. Drawing on insights from Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), dependency theory, and world-systems analysis, this study reexamines the politics that propelled the clamour for a new international order, as well as explores contemporary economic injustices and proposes constructive ways to reimagine international law—from a tool of control, to a foundation and framework for global justice and collective prosperity.

 

Against the backdrops of regulatory chill, unequal financial governance, and new forms of extractivism, etc, the article contends that CERDS’s core principles: economic sovereignty, equality, and solidarity, collectively foreshadow contemporary pressing agendas, to wit: technology justice, fair debt resolution, climate reparations, and responsible environmental stewardship. It advances concrete reform pathways—binding corporate accountability, a multilateral debt workout mechanism, and public-interest re-engineering of investment treaties—and maps complementary institutional shifts through South–South finance, reserve pooling, and a ‘new Bretton Woods’ orientation. Recasting ‘law as it is’ into ‘law as it ought to be,’ the article positions CERDS as a compass for a just, sustainable, and decolonial international legal order.