Having taught international law for over three decades, Iam fully aware of the dearth of literature that particularly addressesthe interaction of international law with sustainable development, human rights, development financing, and international organizations. This has led to pedagogical challenges and compelled students to spend longer hours in search of information from scattered sources. To a certain extent, the difficulty also affects lawyers, economists, academics, government officials, and governmental as well as non-governmental organizations professionals working on international developmental and environmental issuesthatalsoremain confused in many regards.
In this connection, I happened to just finish reading the above-captioned book by international lawyer Dr. Kishor Uprety, which partly attempts to fill in the gap. The author, who worked on both theoretical as well as practical aspects of the law of international development formore than three decades, has attempted to provide, in a nutshell, a fewtheoretical as well as practical responses to some of the issuesbroadly concerning the intersection ofinternational law and development financing.Simply put, the book revolves around the nooks and crannies of the all-encompassing and multivariate nature of sustainable international development law matters.
While parallelly reviewing the evolutionary processes that reveal the difficulties encountered by international development financing institutions in their governance and countries in their decision-making, the book primarily seeks to help us talk about and understand the legal aspects of international development machinery. It clarifies, through discussions of the different legal instruments issued by international development financing institutions, the nature, patterns, and challenges of collaboration amongst these entities in their financing of infrastructure, as well as their strategiesfor dealing with a variety of issues of common interests.
Indeed, many students, practitioners and policymakers concerned with the theme of ‘Development and Law’ frequently ask how the international development institutions operate and apply the different rules and norms of international law in the context of their financing of development. Through the book, the author attempts to respond to those questions by discussing the different relevant concepts in the contextof international law, policy, practice, and applications.
Notably, this book does not denounce the system of developmentfinancing that has been in existence for so long and has served a huge purpose. The aim seems to be morea survey ofthe functioning of the system, the different policies that derive from general international law, and the practice and challenges of applying them in the context of projects financed by different development financing institutions.The details provided throughout the book will certainly be useful to those students, teachers, and policymakers who want to better understand the business of international development, and its usefulness as well as its weak links.
Clearly, the book is not a treatise nor a toolkit. It is merely a primer on the practice of international institutions that are involvedin promoting, facilitating, and financing international development. But what is interesting is that it is informed bylessons from the author’s more than three decades of hands-on experience in the field, thus helping readers understand both the theory and practice of international law.
The mode of presentation isunique.To avoid blurring the debate, separate but overlapping segments are organized in an orderly manner, while still offering an integrated discussion of the distinctive features. It is designed to entice readers to ask difficult and sometimes uncomfortable questions about development law and financingand toenable them to build a consensus to refine and demand changes to the system.
In so doing, the book, divided into ten chapters, discusses, first,the nexus of law and development, and continues discussing the human rights, globalization, and sustainable development interposition, the development actors, governance, and instruments, the legal and policy challenges of financing development, including the related administrative, management and relational challenges, the challenges of guaranteeing development rights to sub-sovereigns, and challenges of applying international environmental and social management norms. The subsequent chaptersfurther discuss the approach to overcomingchallenges, also touching upon the esoteric theme of happiness, followed by a conclusive segment presenting law as a tool of development, mainly highlightingthe multiple contributions lawyers can make.
Certainly, this book also has shortcomings. Instead of limiting the scope of the book to pure legal aspects, the author could have broadened the scope and dealt with many more themes and challenges pertinent to development. Also, giventhe author’s rich and long experience, the book would have benefitted from more case studies and real examples.
Nonetheless, overall, the author should be commended for introducing an interesting and useful topicthrougha unique legal lens. Thus, the book is a must-read for lawyers and other policy professionals working on the theme of international law and development.
Pravakar Adhikari , MCL (Delhi University), LLM (Columbia University), is the Senior Advocate, and former Professor of International Law (Tribhuvan University).
