Fifty years after the adoption of the Declaration on Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources by the General Assembly of the United Nations in December 1962, this volume assesses the evolution of the principle of permanent sovereignty over natural resources into a principle of customary international law as well as related developments. International environmental and human rights law leave unresolved questions regarding the limitations of this principle, e.g. extraterritorial and international influences such as the applicable criminal and tort law, as well as the extraterritorial and international promotion of good governance, including transparency obligations.

In modern international law, permanent sovereignty over natural resources has come to entail duties as well as rights. This study analyses the evolution of permanent sovereignty from a political claim to a principle of international law, and examines its significance for a number of controversial issues such as peoples' rights, nationalization and environmental conservation. Although political discussion has long focused on the rights arising from permanent sovereignty, Dr. Schrijver argues that this has been at the expense of the consideration of the corollary obligations in also entails. His book thus identifies new directions sovereignty over natural resources has taken in an increasingly interdependednt world and demonstrates its relevance to current debate on foriegn-investment regulation, the environment, and sustainable development -- Back cover.

This book explores the nexus between natural resources ownership and the right to development in Africa. The right to sovereignty over natural resources and the right to development are recognised and protected in an extensive framework of international, regional and domestic instruments. They guarantee people's entitlement to fully and freely utilise their natural resources as a means of subsistence and for economic, social and cultural development. Yet, despite the abundance of natural resources in Africa a majority of the people on the continent remain largely impoverished. This book articulates the central argument that to achieve the right to development in Africa requires appropriate governance of the continent’s natural resources to which the people of Africa are guaranteed sovereign ownership. With case study illustrations from Zimbabwe, Ghana, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, chapters explore the normative measures, specific guarantees and community entitlements to natural resources for the realisation of the right to development. The book will be an invaluable guide to scholars and postgraduate students of Natural Resources, Development and African studies as well as policymakers and practitioners in these areas.

This book is devoted to the 25th anniversary of the United Nations Declaration on the Right to Development. It contains a collection of analytical studies of various aspects of the right to development, which include the rule of law and good governance, aid, trade, debt, technology transfer, intellectual property, access to medicines and climate change in the context of an enabling environment at the local, regional and international levels. It also explores the issues of poverty, women and indigenous peoples within the theme of social justice and equity. The book considers the strides that have been made over the years in measuring progress in implementing the right to development and possible ways forward to make the right to development a reality for all in an increasingly fragile, interdependent and ever-changing world.

This text explores how the public purpose doctrine reconciles the often conflicting, but equally binding, obligations that states have to engage in regulatory sovereignty while honoring host-state obligations to protect foreign investment. The work examines the multiple permutations and iterations of the public purpose doctrine and concludes that this principle needs to be reconceptualized to meet the imperatives of economic globalization and of a new paradigm of sovereignty that is based on the interdependence, and not independence, of states. It contends that the historical expression of the public purpose doctrine in customary and conventional international law is fraught with fundamental flaws that, if not corrected, will give rise to disparities in the relationship between investors and states, asymmetries with respect to industrialized nations and developing states, and, ultimately, process legitimacy concerns.