Human Rights and Multilateral Trade : A Pragmatic Approach to Understanding the Linkages

The linkages between human rights and multilateral trade have been a subject of considerable debate in the last decade or so. The emergence of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995 as the nodal agency for multilateral trade in goods and services led to its intrusion into many issues that were not until then considered to be normally in the domain of trade policy. These included areas such as intellectual property rights and sanitary and phyto-sanitary measures. This intrusion has over the last few years brought to the limelight various tensions caused by overlapping international obligations of States under different legal regimes and international fora. Human rights, in particular, merit special concern, inasmuch as, States have undertaken through numerous international treaties under the auspices of the United Nations (UN), to respect, protect and fulfill human rights. The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), in particular, requires states to pursue policies and strategies aimed at the realization, for every individual of the right to food, health, shelter, education, work, and social security. In the face of these human rights obligations, it is imperative that International Trade policies must be framed in a manner that would, at the very least, not be in violation of the former and, in fact, would further them. All members of the WTO have ratified at least one core international human rights treaty. States, thus, face the dual task of not only adhering to their commitments under both sets of law, but also harmonizing the same so as to avoid breach of one by the other. This paper provides a pragmatic approach on how the tension between multilateral trade and human rights can be understood and approached. The biggest challenge to mainstreaming human rights concerns in WTO processes stems from the notion that human rights obligations on States are extraneous to the WTO regime. This paper provides a realistic way for deconstructing the linkages between the two fields and using language inherent to the text of the WTO Agreements, provides a framework for ensuring that human rights concerns are mainstreamed into WTO processes