Mainstreaming the Right to Development into the World Trade Organization
Files
Description
Since the end of the cold war, two main visions have underpinned the normative evolution of international order: the vision of human rights and humanity and that of economic globalization. Historically, the legal, institutional and policy cultures of international human rights law and of international trade law operated almost entirely in isolation from one another. At the same time, as a matter of international law, the international human rights system and the World Trade Organization (WTO) regime are both based primarily on treaty obligations. A large majority of States are signatories to both the core WTO treaties (the so-called Covered Agreements) and the main United Nations human rights instruments. Although some human rights norms are arguably jus cogens and therefore of higher legal status than ordinary treaty commitments, in general, treaty-based WTO commitments and human rights treaty obligations have equal normative force in international law. As a report of the International Law Commission on fragmentation of international law notes: “In international law, there is a strong presumption against normative conflict” (A/CN.4/L.682 and Corr.1, para. 37). The implication is that one must explore how the WTO regime and the human rights regime can operate and evolve together, complementing each other in positive ways. Since the Third WTO Ministerial Conference, held now more than a decade ago in Seattle, Washington, United States, in 1999, there has been a concerted effort in the international human rights community, by activists, academics and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), to understand how trade affects the realization of human rights and what implications human rights obligations have for the interpretation and negotiation of trade agreements. The current Director-General of WTO, Pascal Lamy, has written about globalization with a human face and his conception of the economic sphere, including the international economic sphere, is deeply rooted in the notion of humanity. More recently, a joint study by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the WTO Secretariat explicitly refers to freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining as “universally recognized human rights”, urges that they be respected as such and not just for instrumental reasons of social peace, and refutes with empirical evidence the notion that respect for such rights must come at a cost to economic development and competitiveness.
Source Publication
Realizing the Right to Development: Essays in Commemoration of 25 Years of the United Nations Declaration on the Right to Development
Source Editors/Authors
United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
Publication Date
2013
Recommended Citation
Howse, Robert L., "Mainstreaming the Right to Development into the World Trade Organization" (2013). Faculty Chapters. 850.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/850
