Labour rights, the World Trade Organisation and the global economy

Abstract

Starting with the fact that recurrent and important labour rights violations occur throughout the world, this paper aims at identifying underlying causes of those violations and choose to focus on the links between labour rights and the World Trade Organisation. While a large majority of states committed themselves to the realisation of labour rights, through their obligations under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights or through their engagement into the International Labour Organisation, a large majority of them are also members of the World Trade Organisation. Yet, international trade law and international human rights law have been developed within two independent spheres, which has led to what we can call the fragmentation of public international law. Therefore, the question of consistency between the norms established within those two spheres has to be raise in order to define whether the enjoyment of labour rights could be undermined by international trade law as developed by the World Trade Organisation. It is thus in this context and in order to determine how to ensure an effective enjoyment of labour rights that this paper examines the potential effects of WTO law on the mentioned rights.