International law, cooperation for economic development and OECD principles of aid effectiveness: An overview

Abstract
This seminar will explore the legal framework, the practice, the profiles of responsibility and the accountability of the actors involved in the cooperation for economic development (e.g. technical and financial assistance, including aid for trade). The scarcity of primary rules of international law regulating this subject reflects the reluctance, especially of developed countries, to be bound by strict rules in this field, both regarding the obligations to provide the assistance and the discipline applicable to the implementation and to the impacts of the economic cooperation programs. As a result development economic cooperation is (1) often designed according to the evaluation of donors instead of being driven by the beneficiary needs; (2) managed and “owned” by the donors; (3) tied, i.e. the activities are implemented by nationals of the donor with infrastructures and equipment originating from the donor; (4) conditional to the implementation of specific economic policies (e.g. some of the World Bank development projects). Spurred by the disappointing outcomes of the development assistance in the 80s and 90s, OECD developed a number of international non-binding principles applicable to the implementation phase of the development cooperation programs (e.g. the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness). Most of the OECD members then incorporated the principles of the Paris declaration in the legal national acts regulating the development cooperation assistance. The seminar will address a number of key questions:

• How cooperation programs for economic development implemented the binding and non-binding applicable OECD provisions?
• Are emerging countries developing alternative principles to that of OECD for the implementation of cooperation program for economic development?
• Are aids from emerging countries “conditioned” and “tied”?
• Are multilateral aids impaired by the emergence of BRICs as relevant actors in cooperation for economic development?
• Will the importance of traditional financial institution (IMF, World Bank) and the “Washington consensus” principles impaired?

Biography of the Speaker
Claudio Dordi is Team Leader of EU-MUTRAP, Vietnam. He is also Associate Professor of International Law at Bocconi University, Milan. He received his Ph.D. in 1995 in International Economic Law. He is habilitated to be professional tax counsellor in Italy and EU. From 1995 to 1996 he has been a consultant for the UNCTAD, Geneva and as a researcher at Bocconi University. Beginning in 1997, he was a faculty member of the Master in International Economic Management (MIEM) of SDA Bocconi where he teaches International Organizations and he worked for a number of law firms in Milano. From 1999 to 2003 he has been lecturer and researcher of international trade law at University of Brescia, Italy, and lecturer of international institutions at Bocconi University, Milan. In 2000 he has been member of a project of research on “EU-Mercosur” negotiations coordinated by the University of Sciences Po, Paris. He has taught trade in services and investment law in the Master of International Law and Economics (MILE) program at the World Trade Institute and in many other European and Latin American Universities (Nicaragua, Brazil, France, and Switzerland). In 2002 and 2003 he has been “visiting Professorial Fellow” at the International Economic Law Institute, Georgetown Law School. In 2004 he taught “International economic law” at the University of Canton (China) and from 2005 to 2006 he has been the director of a project financed by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and aimed at favoring the accession of Vietnam to the World Trade Organization. Since 2005 he is member of the panelists for the EU-Chile FTA Dispute Settlement System. In 2006 he has been appointed by EC Commissioner Peter Mandelson in the EC Group of Experts for the reform of Trade Defence Measures. Since 2007 he has been working as a trade expert for the Multilateral Trade Project of the EC in Vietnam and since October, 2007, he is an expert for the “beyond the WTO” project of the World Bank and he has member of the APEC project on Dispute Settlement. He participated in the research team aiming at analyzing the WTO DSB reports 2004-2006. Since 2008 he has been Technical Assistance Team Leader of the EU-Multilateral Trade Project in Vietnam (MUTRAP III). Since 2012 he is the director of the PhD program in “international law and economics” at Bocconi University. He published four books on a number of international trade-law related subjects (trade discrimination in international law, Rules of Origin, effect of WTO in internal legal systems and the Law of World Trade Organization). He published more than 50 articles in many European and international journals (e.g. World Trade Review, Journal of International Economic Law, and Journal of World Trade) and he acted as a speaker in more than 300 academic and professional conferences.