No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
Protecting Human Rights in the Context of Free Trade? The Case of the SADC Group Economic Partnership Agreement
Abstract
As free trade agreements proliferate, the relationship between trade and human rights continues to attract attention across academic disciplines. The linkages between human rights and liberal trade rules have been the subject of debate for some time. Since most countries tend to afford constitutional protection to both human rights and freedom of trade, there appears to be an inescapable connection between the two regimes. In theory, at least, economic growth should improve human rights standards and conditionality can be one way through which human rights compliance is achieved. However, in practice, States often pursue economic objectives that conflict with their human rights obligations. This article explores the linkages and potential conflicts between human rights and trade in the context of regional trade agreements, with a focus on the interim Economic Partnership Agreement between the European Union and the Southern African Development Community Group.
... Néanmoins on assisteà une destruction d'emplois pour les firmes les moins productives. Trefler (2004) (Gammage, 2014). Leséchecs de ces différents accords sont attribuablesà la faiblesse des exportations des pays ACP vers l'UE ainsi qu'à la diversification de leurséconomies (Heron, 2011;Bishop et al., 2013 (Fontagné et al., 2011;Adamu, 2013;Ousmane, 2014;Nwali et Arene, 2015;Mbithi et al., 2015). ...
... culturel. C'est ainsi que sont abordés d'autres volets tels que la santé(Hirano, 2012;Townsend et al., 2016), l'investissementKuruk (2012);Bernal (2013), la protection des droits de l'homme(Gammage, 2014).Un regard porté sur le volet politique de la question de l'APE laisseà découvert son caractère asymétrique qui favorise leséchanges pour la partie UE. C'est la raison pour laquelle Gammage (2014) soutient que les politiques commerciales externes sont utilisées par l'UE pour véhiculer leur standard de droit et de démocratie dans d'autres pays. ...
... e(Bernal, 2013). Ceci met en avant les conclusions de nombreux travaux sur l'optimisme des APEà l'égard desÉtats ACP. Au-delà des arguments qui ont prévalu dans les discussions sur l'APE bilatéral Cameroun-Union Européenne avec d'une part des avis favorables et d'autre part ceux qui le compromettent, de nombreux travaux s'arriment aux seconds avis.Gammage (2014) montre en effet que les politiques commerciales externes sont un moyen utilisé par l'UE pour véhiculer son standard de droit et de démocratie dans d'autres pays. Cette domination laisseà découvert des critiques sur le caractère asymétrique de la relation qui justifie tout le poids de l'union européenne dans la table des négociations(Elg ...
Cette thèse a pour objectif d’évaluer les impacts de l’accord de partenariat économique (APE) bilatéral Cameroun-Union Européenne rendu à sa phase d’application depuis le 04 Août 2016. Elle vise surtout à renseigner les acteurs de la communauté scientifique ainsi que ceux du gouvernement sur les attentes de cet accord entre 2016 et 2040. Élaborée autour de trois axes d’analyse, macroéconomique et concurrence pure et parfaite ; macroéconomique et concurrence imparfaite ; microéconomique, la démarche méthodologique adoptée est bâtie autour d’un modèle d’équilibre général calculable (MEGC) dynamique récursif dont les données de base sont issues d’une matrice de comptabilité sociale (MCS) de 2016. Cette dernière est construite à partir des données sur le tableau des ressources et emplois issues de l’INS (2017) et des données de la comptabilité nationale issues du Ministère des Finances (2017). L’exercice de la microsimulation est élaboré à partir des données d’enquête ECAM 4 de l’INS. Il en ressort que l’APE engendrerait globalement des pertes énormes au cours de la période 2016-2040 sur un plan macroéconomique. Ces pertes s’amplifieraient davantage sous l’hypothèse de concurrence imparfaite. De plus, l’accord entrainerait une aggravation de la pauvreté et une accélération des inégalités de revenus au sein des ménages.
... 22 Importantly, this western constitution of international human rights is a point of view that does not explicitly present itself as western. 23 In this way, it conceals its epistemological expressions, paving the way for claims of universalism, egalitarianism and objectivity. 24 The article is divided into three parts. ...
The current global human rights order, eminently propagated in international legal instruments and statements, is to a great extent state-centric in character, bestowing obligations on states, whilst largely ignoring the conduct of non-state actors in the form of transnational corporations (TNCs) and trade governance institutions whose record of human rights adherence is scarcely convincing. This inability to aptly govern the conduct of transnational entities, even when it is evident that their power now eclipses that of states, raises the concern that the extant human rights regime is a neoliberal construct advancing market fundamentalism and widening the economic disparities between developed and developing countries. This article unsettles the doctrinal foundations underlying state
centrism in international human rights law, arguing that such a version of human rights is exposing developing countries to neoliberal oligarchs, and market deficiencies, which if not reformed, may entrench underdevelopment. It calls for a decolonised human rights regime which impose human rights obligations on the conduct of transnational entities in pursuit of human dignity, equality and freedom.
... 3 Governments that are part of the EU seem united in the attempt to address underlying causes of increasing migration, but deliberately overlook the point that their policies in specifi c regions might fuel the causes of the causes-eg, through promotion of free trade agreements in African countries, which creates confl ict with human rights. 4 To address these underlying causes will include a reduced emphasis on the EU's economic interests. Governments world wide need to implement global health strategies, which often only exist on paper, to create societies that accommodate peoples' free movement between countries and evenly share resources based on universal rights and duties. 2 However, these processes will not be implemented without specific actions. ...
The call to re-theorise international agricultural trade regulation to advance the human right to food has gained traction in various international platforms, including the United Nations (UN) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), among others. The emerging consensus is that the WTO-driven liberal rules on agricultural trade regulation have been unable to deliver effective outcomes for the realisation of the human right to food. This article explores options for re-theorising the regulation of international trade in agriculture to strengthen synergetic linkages with the obligations imposed on States to respect, promote, fulfil, and realise the human right to food enshrined under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and a number of other international human rights instruments. It contends that existing legal theories provide the basis for a plausible theoretical justification for incorporating explicit human right to food obligations into the WTO framework for agricultural trade regulation through the reform of key provisions of the WTO Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) pertaining to market access, domestic support to agriculture, and export subsidies. Theories of sustainable development and distributive justice theories spawn a comprehensive egalitarian imperative for re-conceptualising the rules of the AoA in pursuit of realising the human right to food, especially in developing countries.
Successful peace policy that enshrines human rights allows individuals to thrive economically, politically, and socially with minimal conflict. Building from literature on crimes of globalization, genocide, and human rights, the current research investigates the concept of a criminogenic policy that at its core is antithetical to peace policy. Using case study analysis, North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is found to be both criminal and criminogenic in violation of international law for two primary reasons. First, the NAFTA negotiation process was criminal and criminogenic for three interrelated reasons: (1) powerful elites heavily influenced the outcome, (2) it was undemocratic, and (3) the opposition was often repressed. Second, the NAFTA policy itself was criminal and criminogenic for two reasons: (1) NAFTA as a policy ignored all of the critical voices that predicted negative outcomes and (2) the written text of NAFTA is criminal for failing to include human rights protections while offering a litany of rights to protect business investment.
Increasing globalisation increases the difficulty of studying crime (and analogous social injury) exponentially and necessitates new methods and theoretical. The current paper proposes a new analytical framework for studying criminogenic policies created bi- or multilaterally which serves several purposes. First, this fills a major gap in the state crime literature that fails to investigate state crimes where more than one state is criminally responsible. Second, the concept of an international criminogenic policy provides a new avenue for studying multiple participating criminal states and begins to explain how policy can create criminogenic conditions. Lastly, the new analytical framework integrates four disparate, major bodies of literature: (1) state-corporate crime/crimes of the powerful literature; (2) world-systems analysis; (3) social structure of accumulation theory; and (4) the concept of the transnational capitalist class. Taken together, the proposed framework offers a lens forstudying complex crimes via policy formation and its consequences.
There is no question that climate change is one of the biggest challenges humanity faces today. Today, 80% of the global energy supply comes from fossil fuels. Fossil fuels contribute to climate change and are finite, which leads to energy insecurity. We cannot use all the fossil reserves we have without seriously disrupting the climate system. Renewable energy can help here in that it is cleaner than fossil fuels. It also helps towards energy independence and therefore enhances energy security. Renewable energy sources are the only long-term energy supply solution we have at present. Trade law could be used as a vehicle to achieve these goals because trade rules can promote environmental goods and services.
In the mid-1990s, the EU adopted a general policy of including human rights clauses in all of its international trade agreements. Through these human rights clauses, in addition to other tools such as Human Rights Dialogue and sanctions, the EU seeks to promote the protection of human rights in its external relations. There are, however, some issues arising regarding the content, use, implementation and activation of these clauses. Not only do human rights clauses in different agreements vary in wording and scope, but also the actual implementation and enforcement by the EU differ from case to case, raising questions as to the selective character and the consistency of the EU’s action and, consequently, as to the EU’s credibility as a normative international actor. The main deficiencies in this regard are the selective and at times inconsistent inclusion and activation of human rights clauses, as shown by an examination of the EU’s agreements and their implementation and enforcement in practice. This article examines human rights clauses in the EU’s international trade agreements and the implementation and enforcement thereof, in order to shed light on the promises and pitfalls of the EU’s human rights efforts.
Human rights education is critiqued for being traditionalist and conceptually imprisoned. This view stems from the distrust in its ability to transform deeply rooted injustices and inequalities etched within South Africa’s society. There is therefore an outcry to reimagine human rights education. For this article it is important to understand how and why human rights education discourses in South Africa have come to be framed by some scholars in this way and to contemplate where the discourse might be heading in the future. We reviewed doctoral theses in the field of Education which claim to engage with and make contributions to human rights education research. We found that human rights education discourses have been (and are being) shaped in South Africa in terms of three distinct phases: inception, growth, and cynicism. It became evident from the findings that human rights education research is predominantly school-based and fundamentally descriptive and uncritical. To conclude, we reflect on these findings so as to put forward future considerations for human rights education research.
The EU is a formidable power in trade. Structurally, the sheer size of its market and its more than forty-year experience of negotiating international trade agreements have made it the most powerful trading bloc in the world. Much more problematically, the EU is also becoming a power through trade. Increasingly, it uses market access as a bargaining chip to obtain changes in the domestic arena of its trading partners, from labour standards to development policies, and in the international arena, from global governance to foreign policy. Is the EU up to its ambitions? This article examines the underpinnings of the EU's power through trade across issue-areas and across settings (bilateral, inter-regional, global). It then analyses the major dilemmas associated with the exercise of trade power and argues that strategies of accommodation will need to be refined in each of these realms if the EU is to successfully transform its structural power into effective, and therefore legitimate, influence.
The Southern African Development Community (SADC) is a regional economic community in southern Africa consisting of fifteen Member States1 with a stated aim of creating a ‘Free Trade Area’ among its Members. SADC’s Tribunal (‘the Tribunal') in Windhoek had the capacity, until the summer of 2010, to hear individual applications from the SADC Member States on human rights matters. The Tribunal was meant to act in cases where an individual’s human rights were not being protected by the legal system in their home state and they had exhausted all available legal remedies. In the most high profile case to come before the Tribunal, Zimbabwean farmers were able to apply for an order preventing state forces proceeding with the removal of farm land under a government land redistribution programme that was being executed against mainly white landowners, depriving them of their property without compensation.
This article argues that the EPAs initialled between the EU and less than half of the ACP countries do not represent a ‘historic step’ in EU-ACP relations, but are the outcome of asymmetric power relations. Many ACP countries submitted hastily drawn up liberalisation schedules that did not consider whether their commitments were in line with those of their neighbours — with significant implications for regional integration processes. Further, the enforcement of EPAs is unlikely in some cases, given the decreasing attractiveness of the EU market and the Commission's dwindling capacity to sanction non-compliance by withdrawing preferences. If the EU wants to see EPAs implemented, it is vital that the process and outcome are owned and supported by both sides.
This article explores the role and effectiveness of small state trade diplomacy in the negotiations to conclude Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) between the European Union (EU) and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group of countries, focusing specifically on the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Given the vast power asymmetries between the EU and the ACP, small states have had limited bargaining power to shape the process and the outcome of the negotiations. Unlike most other ACP EPA negotiations, the SADC small states were also caught between a rock (EU) and a hard place (South Africa), with both parties competing to promote their visions for regional integration. In the end, the EPA process split SADC into four sets of separate trade regimes with the EU, undermining the established regional integration project. The article explains this divisive outcome of the SADC EPA process by analysing the negotiation behaviour of the main parties, specifically the ‘weaker’ players. The article concludes with key lessons for small states' future trade negotiations.
In recent years interested individuals and pressure groups have expressed considerable concern over the alleged complicity of multinational enterprises (MNEs) in violations of human rights. While such allegations are not historically unprecedented, the context in which they arise has changed. In particular, the increased integration of the global economy has created a perception that MNEs should take more responsibility for the social dimension of their actions, a perception that enterprises themselves have in part accepted through inter alia the issuing codes of corporate conduct. Furthermore, the rise of identity and lifestyle politics has made MNEs, as purveyors of products and services that help to define consumer lifestyles, a target of concern. These changes have significant implications for the evolution of human rights theory. In particular, they require a shift in the traditional view that corporations can only be victims of violations of human rights committed by states, towards one that extends responsibility for the commission, prevention and avoidance of such violations to MNEs themselves. On the other hand, there exist strong arguments against such an extension of human rights responsibilities. In particular, it is said that MNEs should only be responsible for the conduct of their business and should not be forced to involve themselves in such wider social issues. They are also private law entities and so should not possess the same responsibilities as states.
* Provides an innovative account of the perceived tension between free trade and human rights, setting out and critically examining the assumptions underlying this debate
* Gives a full overview of the social history of the trade and human rights debate
* Suggests a new framework for the trade and human rights debate, focusing on the WTO's role in bringing together the expert knowledge and informal relationships that drive states' behaviour in the international economic order.
The rise of economic liberalism in the latter stages of the 20th century coincided with a fundamental transformation of international economic governance, especially through the law of the World Trade Organization. In this book, Andrew Lang provides a new account of this transformation, and considers its enduring implications for international law. Against the commonly-held idea that 'neoliberal' policy prescriptions were encoded into WTO law, Lang argues that the last decades of the 20th century saw a reinvention of the international trade regime, and a reconstitution of its internal structures of knowledge.
In addition, the book explores the way that resistance to economic liberalism was expressed and articulated over the same period in other areas of international law, most prominently international human rights law. It considers the promise and limitations of this form of 'inter-regime' contestation, arguing that measures to ensure greater collaboration and cooperation between regimes may fail in their objectives if they are not accompanied by a simultaneous destabilization of each regime's structures of knowledge and characteristic features. With that in mind, the book contributes to a full and productive contestation of the nature and purpose of global economic governance.
For the past decade the EU has been preparing to end its tradition of preferential and partially reciprocal trade with the African-Caribbean-Pacific (ACP) countries. With the expiry of trade preferences in 2007 under the Cotonou Agreement, these trade partners have agreed to negotiate Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA) and trade on reciprocal terms, in a bid to preserve their special relationship. A Sustainability Impact Assessment (SIA) was commissioned by the EU to engage stakeholders in discussion about the real and potential challenges of the new trade regime facing ACP countries. This paper examines the participatory process of the EPA negotiations, in particular the Sustainability Impact Assessment, through the lens of country ownership and deliberative democracy. Discussion of the participation process will be twofold: analysing whether the issues raised in the public sphere are reflected in the CARIFORUM-EC EPA, and the extent to which the SIA is legitimised through public participation.
The concept of embeddedness has general applicability in the study of economic life and can alter theoretical and empirical approaches to the study of economic behaviors. Argues that in modern industrial societies, most economic action is embedded in structures of social relations. The author challenges the traditional economic theories that have both under- and oversocialized views of the conception of economic action and decisions that merge in their conception of economic actors atomized (separated) from their social context. Social relations are assumed to play on frictional and disruptive, not central, roles in market processes. There is, hence, a place and need for sociology in the study of economic life. Productive analysis of human action requires avoiding the atomization in the extremes of the over- and undersocialized concepts. Economic actors are neither atoms outside a social context nor slavish adherents to social scripts. The markets and hierarchies problem of Oliver Williamson (with a focus on the question of trust and malfeasance) is used to illustrate the use of embeddedness in explicating the proximate causes of patterns of macro-level interest. Answers to the problem of how economic life is not riddled with mistrust and malfeasance are linked to over- and undersocialized conceptions of human nature. The embeddedness argument, on the contrary, stresses the role of concrete personal relations and networks (or structures) in generating trust and discouraging malfeasance in economic life. It finds a middle way between the oversocialized (generalized morality) and undersocialized (impersonal institutional arrangements) approaches. The embeddedness approach opens the way for analysis of the influence of social structures on market behavior, specifically showing how business relations are intertwined with social and personal relations and networks. The approach can easily explain what looks otherwise like irrational behavior. (TNM)
Incl. abstract, tables, bibl. The Cotonou Agreement, signed on 23 June 2000, defines the new relationship between the European Union (EU) and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) states. It was the result of 18 months of negotiations to decide the future of EU-ACP relations after the Lome´ Convention's expiry on 29 February 2000. This article highlights the significant changes represented by the Cotonou Agreement and emphasises some of the dangers that may result for the ACP states. In doing so, the article adopts a neo-Gramscian perspective showing how the nature of the new EU-ACP agreement has significantly shifted the relationship further from one of co-operation to one of coercion. The new approach taken by the EU can be understood within the context of the hegemonic dominance of neoliberalism within political elites. This is most explicitly demonstrated by the EU's major justification for the proposed changes: the need to comply with the core principles and rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Human rights and liberal trade rules (including WTO rules) are based on the same values: individual freedom and responsibility (e.g. to adjust to competition); non-discrimination; rule of law; access to courts and adjudication to disputes; promotion of social welfare through peaceful cooperation among free citizens; parliamentary approval of national and international rules. The non-economic values of WTO law are no less important for the human rights and welfare of citizens than the economic welfare effects of liberal trade. Like the EC, the WTO can and should become an advocate not only of economic freedom, but of human freedom more generally. This article argues in favour of constitutional reforms of WTO law so as to take civil society and human rights more seriously. Copyright 2000 by Oxford University Press.