The disastrous garment industry in Bangladesh is a perfect example of capitalist expansion to the Global South where labour is cheap and abundant. But such foreign investments, now highly sought by governments of poor countries, often mean deplorable conditions of work and high profits for the companies

cc A just world is a noble goal, but in a ‘power-asymmetrical’ world in which richer nations mete out inappropriate measures for developing countries – from sanctions to arrest warrants – international rather than home-grown attempts to deliver justice can themselves easily become unjust, cautions Vikas Nath. The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) recent issue of an arrest warrant for Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir, for example, is widely seen across the African Union as likely to inflame rather than resolve the Darfur conflict. Nath underlines that each of the existing 13 arrest warrants issued by the ICC have been solely for citizens of four African countries, despite the perpetrating of crimes against humanity in Iraq, Gaza, Colombia and the Caucasus region, and concludes that solutions native to the African continent represent a far more appropriate means of resolving conflict.