Seeing the Original Intent of Promoting Fairness and Liberalisation in Global Investment and Trade, Through ICDPASO's Reading List

We have World Book Day to remind ourselves that reading should be part of our daily life. But at the ICDPASO Secretariat, books have never been just for one day — they are how we make sense of the world, a language that bridges cultural differences, and a way to turn the unfamiliar and disagreement into connection.

Look at ICDPASO's annual reading list as a whole, and what emerges is not a collection of individual titles, but an atmosphere: from International Economic Law to interdisciplinary and forward-thinking works, from global governance to digital transformation, from environmental law to trade rules. These are not scattered fragments of knowledge — they form a coherent intellectual path. And that path begins with a question: Why does this world still have so many trade barriers, so many investment hurdles, so wide a development gap?

The reading list does not answer this question directly. But it gives you everything you need to start looking for the answer.

Reading International Economic Law is reading the ambition behind a certain order. The postwar trading system moved from GATT to the WTO. Tariff negotiations gave way to finely detailed rules on non-tariff barriers. Every step was filled with compromise and persistence. But order has never been neutral. Who drafts the rules? Who interprets them? Who enforces them? These three questions point to an unspoken thread running beneath the reading list — fairness has never been a by-product of economic growth. It was the original purpose behind the design.

ICDPASO's name contains the phrase "Disputes Prevention." I have chewed on those words in the quiet of late nights. Procedure as the path to justice — not a footnote to outcomes. In an age of frequent investment disputes and intensifying trade frictions, ICDPASO does not look away. Instead, it extends the question of fairness into the real circumstances of the people it serves.

Beyond specialist titles, the ICDPASO reading list also includes literary nonfiction about food delivery riders, Delivering . The author, Wang Wan  says: "I don't want to become numb." Against the grand narrative of global investment and trade, these words sound so small, and yet carry so much weight. Slowing down means refusing to be a single cog in the machine of efficiency. Slowing down means reconnecting with the real people that rules touch.

That ICDPASO's reading list includes a book like this is no coincidence. It reminds everyone working on these weighty topics that the ultimate goal of liberalization is not the free movement of capital. It is people — specific, real people — not being systematically left behind.

Global governance, digital transformation, environmental law — these are big, hard words. But the softer side of this reading list is precisely where it is most genuine. It understands that hard topics need a soft landing, and that soft landing requires empathy. Empathy does not come from data. It comes from vivid cases and stories behind individual cases.

World Book Day falls in April, when the world is just emerging from a long winter.

ICDPASO colleagues sit together and talk about how trade rules evolved after the international Conferences, the legal boundaries of carbon border adjustment mechanisms, data sovereignty on digital trade platforms — but they also talk about a woman rider running through rain and wind, staying alert in the face of a system.

These two conversations are not separate.

To truly understand fairness in global trade, you need two kinds of vision at once: the macro view that surveys institutions from above, and the micro view that crouches down to see how individuals live within the gaps those institutions create. Books provide the first. Reading leads you to seek the second.

I often wonder: what is the reading spirit of a people-centred international organization like ICDPASO?

It is not the showy embrace of books as cultural polish, nor the self-congratulation of an intellectual elite. It is a sustained, question-driven, collective practice. A book here is not an ending — it is a beginning. The beginning of a conversation. And the real end is the conversation that follows.

Fairness and liberalization were never built overnight. They are the distance from one book to the next. They are the deepening from one discussion to the next. They are the small but firm crossing from "I want to understand" to "I am willing to take responsibility."

If there is only one sentence to carry forward, let it be Wang Wan's:

"I want to slow down."

Slow down, and you can hear how trade rules knock on the doors of ordinary lives. Slow down, and fairness may become more than a fine slogan — it may become the genuine will to walk the long road ahead, step by step.

The ICDPASO reading list is one marker on that road. It says: we are still reading. We are still walking.