Human Rights and Labour Standards from the Public Health Perspective in the World Trade Organization

the effects of the interaction between labor standards and human rights that has become a key issue in the World Trade organization. Policy makers gradually developed new rules to achieve both trade and human rights objectives. England signed treaties with the U.S., Portugal, Denmark and Sweden to ban trade in slaves ect. The trade labour linkage has a long history. It has become one of the most contentious contemporary issues in trade and labour policy circles and debates.  The idea of using international labour standards to protect workers from economic exploitation was first promoted by individual social reformers in Europe in the first half of the nineteenth century during the early stages of the industrial revolution. Calls for an international labour legislation increased dramatically during the second half of the nineteenth century and found expression in various international organizations that were formed (often international associations of trade unions). Besides, international trade policy and labor standards can also hurt the right to health, directly or indirectly.

The International Labor Organization and its role from the Human rights perspective

The (ILO) formally entered the trade labour interface debate in 1994 at the time of discussing a possible inclusion of a social clause in the WTO, the establishment of a link between trade and labour in different  forms within NAFTA and the EU, and the conditioning of trade preferences and concessions by some developed countries in respect for labour standards. The ILO set up a working party on the social dimensions of the liberalization of international trade, but in 1995, the ILO’s governing body concluded that the working party would not pursue the question of trade sanction and that further discussions of a link between international trade and social standards or a sanction-based social clause mechanism would be suspended. With respect to trade and labor standards linkages in regional trading arrangements, within the EU, the social dimension of the European integration took a concrete form in 1991, when 11 of the 12 Member States (excluding the UK) signed the community’s Charter of Fundamental Social Rights. Another important step in the development of EU social policy was the adoption by the 11 members (excluding the UK) of the protocol on Social Policy at Maastricht in 1991