National treatment is a principle in customary international law vital to many treaty regimes. Under national treatment, if a state grants a particular right, benefit or privilege to its own citizens, it must also grant those advantages to the citizens of other states while they are in that country. In the context of international agreements, a state must provide equal treatment to those citizens of other states that are participating in the agreement. While this is generally viewed as a desirable principle, in custom it conversely means that a state can deprive foreigners of anything of which it deprives its own citizens. An opposing principle calls for an international minimum standard of justice (a sort of basic due process) that would provide a base floor for the protection of rights and of access to judicial process. The conflict between national treatment and minimum standards has mainly played out between industrialized and developing nations, in the context of expropriations. Many developing nations, having the power to take control over the property of their own citizens, wished to exercise it over the property of aliens as well. Though support for national treatment was expressed in several controversial (and legally nonbinding) United Nations General Assembly resolutions, the issue of expropriations is almost universally handled through treaties with other states and contracts with private entities, rather than through reliance upon international custom. National treatment is an integral part of many World Trade Organization agreements.
