Law, Social Justice & Global Development (An Electronic Law Journal) Confronting Trade-Related Human Rights in a GATS- Compatible World

2 Focusing on the ‘services economy ’ and the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) this article analyses the ideological, institutional, policy and operational layers of ‘coherence ’ that advance the hegemonic power of the triumvirate of the Bretton Woods institutions and the WTO; revealing their distinct, yet synergistic, functions. Although these diverse levels rarely involve active collaboration, the cumulative effect is a seemingly impregnable edifice. The author contends that despite this ‘impregnable ’ appearance, they have failed to drown out the dissident voices of the disempowered and dispossessed who demand alternatives to neoliberalism or to subdue those international organisations that still insist that services are inescapably social. This persistence suggests that the ‘trade-related’ human rights and development paradigm is more fragile than is often recognised. That, in turn, poses a challenge to articulate counter-hegemonic concepts of human rights and development in ways that can articulate an ideological platform for a post-neoliberal paradigm