ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the challenges of globalisation, and its implications for international law. Although there is a lack of consensus on how to defi ne globalisation and what its consequences will be, there is broad agreement that globalisation is complex, dynamic, multifaceted, multilayered and multidimensional, and that it has captured unprecedented global attention. However, globalisation is not a new phenomenon; it is not unilinear or unstoppable; and it does not imply universality.1 It is new and qualitatively different from its prior incarnations as a result of, fi rst, the rapid advances in technological developments in communication and transportation sectors and, second, the information revolution, especially the explosion of the internet. Globalisation is controversial: it has staunch advocates and equally determined detractors. Also, as aptly stated by keen observers, globalisation constitutes for both its advocates and opponents:
one of the potentially great forces of human transformation in the new century and beyond because it appears to be restructuring (in a most consequential manner) the ways in which we work, play, communicate, consume, produce, and exchange – in short how we live.2
