THE ROLE OF INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC DIPLOMACY IN PROMOTING GLOBAL TRADE AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: A LEGAL PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

Trade has never been a purely economic affair. Behind every tariff schedule, market access commitment and regional trade bloc sits a web of negotiation, persuasion and legal engineering that diplomats and trade officials carry out largely outside the public eye. This article examines the legal dimensions of international economic diplomacy using doctrinal approach and asks how it has shaped, and continues to shape, the twin objectives of expanding global trade and embedding sustainable development within that trade. It traces the institutional architecture built after Bretton Woods and Marrakesh, considers how instruments such as the Doha Ministerial Declaration and the Rio Declaration have tried to fuse commercial liberalization with environmental and developmental concern, and uses the WTO's Shrimp-Turtle dispute and the African Continental Free Trade Area as illustrations of economic diplomacy translated into binding legal commitment. The article argues that economic diplomacy functions as the connective tissue of the international economic legal order: without it, treaties remain unsigned, disputes remain unresolved, and the ambitious language of sustainable development remains aspirational rather than operative. It concludes that a more coherent legal framework, one that treats trade and sustainability as mutually reinforcing rather than competing goals, is achievable only through sustained and well-institutionalized diplomatic practice.