The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) is one of the most successful international instruments that provide uniformity in the rules for international trade. It has been adopted by seventy-three countries and has been in force for twenty-one years. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) signed the CISG on 30th September 1981 and many international sales of goods cases have been resolved under the CISG in China. The author will investigate these Chinese cases to examine the effectiveness of the CISG in order to establish whether the application of the CISG has been successful in leading to predictable judgments. This thesis focuses on remedies for breach of contract in the international sale of goods. Remedies are the main reason why claims are made in the international sale of goods and as such they are fundamental to that trade. The main remedies considered in this thesis are the avoidance of contract, damages and specific performance. In addition, mitigation and the categorisation of the breach of contract are discussed where the former is an important means to restrict the recoverable damages and the latter constitutes the foundation for the study of remedies for breach of contract. Furthermore, the provisions related to the remedial rule of the CISG are those that the Chinese tribunals have applied most in their judgments. Research in this area provides the author with sufficient sources of cases for the examination of the Chinese decisions. Two other alternative national regimes are compared with the CISG to assess the predictability of decisions under these systems. These are the old Chinese law, i.e., the PRC Foreign-Related Economic Contract Law (FECL) and English law, i.e., Sale of Goods Act 1979 (SGA) together with English case law. The FECL was the governing law of the international sale contract before China acceded to the CISG. The SGA is the present statute of English international sale contract law. The similarities and differences of the remedial rules between the CISG, FECL and English law are compared in this thesis. Analysis of the Chinese cases tried under the rules of the CISG shows that the outcomes of these cases are not predictable. The author will apply the remedial rules of the FECL and English law to the Chinese cases examined here to find out whether the application of either of these two alternative regimes could have led to outcomes that are more predictable. The conclusion of this thesis summarizes the results of the author’s examination with regard to the Chinese tribunals’ difficulties in making predictable judgments, the causes of difficulty where judgments have been unpredictable and the author’s proposals as to how to resolve such difficulties

Globalization has become one of the defining features of the contemporary world, and is, no doubt, having some impact on human rights. In examining the nature of the impact with particular reference to Africa, this Thesis challenges the conventional scholarship which has so far concentrated on the impact of globalization on human rights, ignoring the possible impact of human rights on processes of globalization, and argues that in order to obtain a holistic view of the relationship between globalization and human rights, sufficient attention must equally be given to the corresponding impact of human rights norms on processes of globalization. In support of this formulation, three levels of analysis are adopted in the Thesis, namely; international, regional and national systems. It is argued that at the international level, the impact of human rights norms on processes of globalization is evidenced by the fact that international economic institutions such as International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and World Trade Organization (WTO), which initially ignored human rights norms in their policies, programmes and operations, have now embraced such norms. At the regional level, the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, embodying human rights norms attentive to the African condition, has been used to constrain processes of globalization. Finally, using three African countries, namely, South Africa, Nigeria, and Kenya as case studies, it is demonstrated that at the national levels, human rights norms are also impacting on processes of globalization, as the activities of transnational corporations, and those of governments based on the dictates of economic globalization, are being challenged by human rights NGOs and other social movements. It is on this score that the ‘Mutual Impact thesis’ is formulated, the contention being that for a proper understanding of whether the impact of globalization on human rights is positive or negative, a debate that has engaged the attention of some writers, the preliminary issue of the corresponding impact of human rights on globalization must also be taken into account.