All three aspects of economic globalisation share a common theme - the 'freeing up' of movement across national borders, whether it be for trade, investment or finance.

This entails the removal of rules which national governments have traditionally held in place to regulate the activity of foreign firms and to protect their own local economies. Globalisation in its current form means liberalisation.

Liberalisation - more commonly known as the 'free trade' agenda - sounds reasonable in itself. Much of the language used to describe it suggests that it is a positive trend: the removal of 'restrictions', 'barriers' and 'obstacles' to what should be 'free' trade.

Yet beneath the language of 'free' trade lurks an important question: free for whom?

Critics argue that the 'freedoms' of liberalisation are really just freedoms for the multinationals which stand to benefit from a relaxation of rules regulating their activities. While this enables them to gain greater access to new markets free from any restrictions on their conduct, it is far from clear that liberalisation of trade and investment offers the world's poorest communities the freedoms they need: from hunger, poverty and insecurity.

The central problem with the free trade agenda is that it pits the world's most powerful corporations against the fledgling industries of developing countries, and removes the regulations protecting them.

Liberalisation has often been compared to putting a flyweight in the ring with Muhammad Ali, and then removing the gloves. Not surprisingly, the results have often left the weaker participant reeling.

The removal of regulations governing the activities of multinationals also exposes local communities to abuse and exploitation at their hands. The UN's 20-year attempt to introduce binding regulations on multinationals finally came to nought in the 1990s, when the world's richest nations saw to it that the UN's draft code of conduct for multinationals would never be adopted by the international community.

Since then multinationals have only signed up to voluntary codes of their own choosing.