Raising human rights concerns in the World Trade Organization: Actors, processes and possible strategies

Whether the World Trade Organization (WTO) helps or hinders the realization of human rights has been high on the popular agenda in the last couple of years. Yet the WTO has been accused of preventing countries from setting their own health standards, of dangerously eroding citizens' interests in favor of commercial interests, and of being a veritable nightmare for certain sectors of humanity. These accusations usually end with a call to the WTO to recognize the primacy of human rights over international trade law. Such calls have not been heeded, and one might wonder whether they have even been heard. This article will explore why calls for the WTO to take human rights on board have not yet met with success. To set this exploration in context, it starts with an overview of the history, structure, and functions of the WTO. It then looks at some specific areas of conflict between human rights norms and WTO-related policies, in order also to give concrete illustration of some of the main political and economic dynamics at play in the WTO. It will conclude that this is a propitious time to raise human rights in the WTO, but will argue that in order to be heard, human rights advocates will have to ensure that the strong legal and ethical arguments supporting the primacy of human rights are directed to the appropriate actors and processes in international trade policy, rather than to the WTO as a whole. Human rights advocates also need to ensure that calls for the WTO to respect human rights are framed in the context of the political realities that shape the WTO's environment. The article will also conclude that human rights activits could make much better use of human rights mechanims to ensure that the trase economic policy promote rather than jeopardize human rights.