have embarked to produce this joint volume, delayed because of the intrinsic reluctance of Steve’s trade law schooling to allow other disciplines to inform its progress.
This time we did talk more, and the following year we taught a trade and human rights seminar together for the first time. We have modified our materials and our format as our perspectives converged. The course, since its second offering, has been cross-listed with the Center for Latin American Studies and the Center for Women’s Studies and Gender Research as well as the business school. The cross-disciplinary enrollment and consequent discussions have enriched the course for students and faculty alike. Imagine the Peace Corps volunteer talking to the aspiring CEO or Wall Street lawyer about issues such as labor rights, environmental degradation, cultural sensitivity, and indigenous rights to medical knowledge. The interplay of disciplines is rich in cross-tested learning.
To be sure, the journey has not been a simple one. We hit many bumps in the road, ranging from materials for the course to what might be realistic solutions to the myriad problems confronted in the advance of trade. These problems included use of and compensation for traditional knowledge to aid humankind, the role of culture, the role of trade in women’s subordination, and so on—the discussions were endless. Sometimes these discussions took place in the classroom, as a result of which, one year, students started calling us Mom and Dad and referring to the conversations as “the folks are having another one of their arguments.”
The discussions and learning are ongoing. More than once Steve expressed consternation at Berta’s generalized solutions of “conversations with all participants around the table.” He would say, “We need concrete ideas, concrete solutions, what can trade do? What does trade offer as a possible solution to the problem?” So just as Steve has become holistic, Berta has become more practical. The end result is an enrichment of both.
The significance in sharing our personal journey is that we both are passionate believers in the connection of our respective fields; we believe that they are mutually enriching—a reality we hope this volume underscores for both human rights and trade advocates. The beautiful irony in this narrative is Steve’s transformation from considering as weird the holistic everything’s-connected approach to a full embrace of that approach in the endeavor to make trade’s promise of prosperity a reality for all. This expansion in the trade horizon suggests that it is not lack of care or disregard for human rights that keep the fields separate, but rather trade officials’ isolation in their view of trade’s reality and human rights advocates’ view of trade as the irredeemable spoiler. We hope that this volume works to bring the advocates of both fields together so that they can utilize the idealism of the human rights model and the pragmatism of the trade model to broaden the reach of the economic well-being that, to date, the systems in their splendid isolation have brought to too few.
In order to attain this admittedly ambitious end, we have structured the book so that advocates, professionals, and academics in all fields, as well as students, may benefit from it. The first three chapters are introductions to the governing law in the fields that we study. The chapter after the present introduction is a basic primer on international law—the umbrella under which both trade law and human rights law fall. The second and third chapters are introductions to trade law and human rights law, respectively. Experts in any of those fields may want to skim or skip them and start with chapter 4, which presents an overview of the intersections of human rights and trade, including principles that provide insight as to the hierarchy in the ordering of their sometimes conflicting norms.
In chapters 5 through 13, we focus on specific intersections of trade and human rights, some more evident in popular discourse than others. For example, chapter 6 on the environment, chapter 8 on labor, chapter 10 on women, and chapter 11 on indigenous populations cover the more visible trade intersections, brought to the public eye mostly by civil society protests at meetings of trade ministers and the World Bank. Because most people learn of the clash of these subjects of human rights law with trade rules only through these outcries, popular opinion is that integration of these intersections faces an insurmountable divide. In this volume, we show how states can deploy rules of the powerful trade system to continue the path of economic prosperity while also improving the human condition. Not all solutions are ideal, but we have used Steve’s knowledge of the instruments and instrumentalities of trade to recommend viable beginnings to the splendid integration that this volume seeks.
Chapters 5 on citizenship, 7 on health, 9 on trafficking, 12 on poverty, and 13 on democracy touch on intersections that are less evident, perhaps because trade’s influence on these human rights is more difficult to capture in a two-second sound bite with a poignant image that can be carried on television stations around the globe. For example, trade is transforming the very idea of citizenship as a method of participation in the decision-making of the government. Trade is empowering massive transnational entities that, because of their purchasing power, can sway government policy on employment and the environment. Similarly, the concept of democracy, when analyzed in the framework of economic rights, entails much more than the ballot box. Trade in the context of democracy can be a double-edged sword. While the West has deployed its economic power to insist on democracy, sometimes taking a narrow view that over-simplistically equates democracy with elections, it has in so doing eroded democracy, wearing thin the social safety net that the most marginalized sorely need. As the chapter on poverty shows, trade’s promise of prosperity has not been realized for all, requiring measures to be adopted to ensure that those who have fallen through the cracks are also afforded some opportunity. Lastly, the trafficking chapter shows how trade, if carried out with blinders on, as a field in a vacuum, can unwittingly contribute to the most egregious of human rights abuses.
Chapter 14 on economic sanctions explains how a tool to enforce human rights sometimes causes human rights deprivations. This ostensible contradiction occurs because of the primacy given by the North/West to civil and political rights over social and economic rights. Inevitably, as in the case of Cuba, this divide creates apparently insurmountable conflicts.
In our conclusion, chapter 15, we try to pave the way for the future, where human rights and trade coexist as parts of a whole and thus must be cognizant and supportive of each other. Trade and human rights cannot possibly be perceived as isolated, as they have been for too long. Yet, the integration must be purposeful and proactive so that trade’s powerful reach can work not only for economic expansion and well-being but also for the flourishing of human rights. Well fed, healthy, educated, and fairly compensated workers are good for business. Trade can be good for people; people are necessary for trade. Social, cultural, economic thriving of the individual ought to be one of the focal points of trade—the best result trade can offer to confirm its promise of prosperity.
1
Global Concepts
International Law Primer
1.1 Overview
This chapter provides an overview of the sources of international
