Time for a United Nations `Global Compact' for Integrating Human Rights into the Law of Worldwide Organizations: Lessons from European Integration 1. Introduction: Time for Reconsidering the `Washington Consensus' and for Strengthening Human Rights in Global Integration Law Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.1 The human rights obligations in the UN Charter and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) of 1948 were negotiated at the same time as the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreements, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) of 1947 and the 1948 Havana Charter for an International Trade Organization. All these agreements aimed at protecting liberty, non-discrimination, the rule of law, social welfare and other human rights values through a rules-based international order and `specialized agencies' (Article 57 of the UN Charter) committed to the economic principle of `separation of policy instruments': foreign policies were to be coordinated in the UN so as to promote `sovereign equality of all its Members' (Article 2(1) of the UN Charter) and collective security; liberalization of payments and monetary stability were collectively pursued through the rules and assistance of the International Monetary Fund (IMF); GATT and the Havana Charter aimed at mutually beneficial liberalization of international trade and investments; development aid and policies were coordinated in the World Bank Group; and social laws and policies were promoted in the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and other specialzed agencies (such as UNESCO and WHO). Apart from a few exceptions (notably in ILO, UNESCO and WHO rules), human rights were not effectively integrated into the law of most worldwide organizations so as to facilitate functional international integration (such as liberalization of trade and payments), notwithstanding different views of governments on human rights and domestic policies (such as communism). The focus on enlarging equal liberties was in accordance with prevailing concepts of `justice' in the United States whose government had elaborated the blueprints for the post-war international order.2 Regional integration law, by contrast, has moved towards a different `integration paradigm' linking economic integration to constitutional guarantees of human rights, democracy and undistorted competition. For instance, the `human rights clauses' in the European Union (EU) Treaty, in the association and cooperation agreements between the EU and more than 20 countries in eastern Europe and the Mediterranean, and in the EU's Cotonou Agreement with 77 African, Caribbean and Pacific states make `respect for human rights, democratic principles and the rule of law ... essential elements' of these agreements.3 The Quebec Summit Declaration of April 2001 and the Inter-American Charter of Democracy of September 2001, adopted by more than 30 member states of the Organization of American States, similarly link the plans for a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) to the strengthening of human rights and democracy. The regular civil society protests at the annual conferences of the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO, and the WTO Ministerial Declaration of November 2001 envisaging additional WTO competition, health and environmental rules, are further illustrations of the need to examine whether the European and FTAA `integration paradigm' should not also become accepted at the worldwide level in order to promote a new kind of global integration law based on human rights and the solidary sharing of the benefits and social adjustment costs of global integration. The proposed change from international functionalism to constitutionalism does not put into question the economic efficiency arguments for `optimizing' and separating policy instruments.4 However, European integration confirms that the collective supply of public goods (such as the global division of labour) may not be politically feasible without comprehensive `package deals' including solidary responses to `market failures' and redistributive `principles of justice'.5 Less developed countries, for instance, often perceive market competition as a `licence to kill' for multinational corporations from developed countries as long as liberal trade rules are not supplemented by competition and social rules (as in the EC) promoting fair opportunities and the equitable distribution of gains from trade. In order to remain democratically acceptable, global integration law (e.g. in the WTO) must pursue not only `economic efficiency' but also `democratic legitimacy' and `social justice' as defined by human rights. Otherwise, citizens will rightly challenge the democratic and social legitimacy of integration law if it pursues economic welfare without regard to social human rights, for example the human right to education of the 130 million children (aged from 6 to 12) who do not attend primary school; the human right to basic health care of the 25 million Africans living with AIDS, or of the 35,000 children dying each day from curable diseases; and the human right to food and an adequate standard of living for the 1.2 billion people living on less than a dollar a day. The new opportunities for the worldwide enjoyment of human rights created by the global division of labour (such as additional economic resources, job opportunities, worldwide communication systems, and access to new medicines and technologies) must be accompanied by the stronger legal protection of social human rights so as to limit abuses of deregulation (e.g. by international cartels, trade in drugs and arms, and trafficking in women and children), help vulnerable groups to adjust to change without violation of their human rights, and put pressure on authoritarian governments to protect not only business interests but also the human rights of all their citizens. 1 Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948, Article 28. 2 For instance, the Bill of Rights, which had to be appended to the US Constitution in order to secure its ratification, focuses more on `inalienable rights' to life and liberty than on social rights to secure `the general welfare' (recognized as an objective of the US Constitution in its Preamble). See also the leading US legal philosopher, J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (1999) chapter II, whose conception of `justice as fairness' for defining the basic rights and liberties of free and equal citizens in a constitutional democracy gives priority to maximum equal liberty as a `first principle of justice'. Rawls' `principle of fair equality of opportunity' and his `difference principle' are recognized only as secondary principles necessary for socially just conditions essential for the moral and rational self-development of every person. Kantian legal theory likewise gives priority to a legal duty of states to ensure conditions of maximum law-governed freedom over moral `duties of benevolence' to provide for the needs of the citizens (cf. A.D. Rosen, Kant's Theory of Justice (1993) 217; and P. Guyer, Kant on Freedom, Law and Happiness (2000) 264 et seq). 3 The quotation is from Article 9 of the Cotonou Agreement signed in June 2000 by the EU, the 15 EU member states and 77 ACP countries. 4 See e.g. W.M. Corden, Trade Policy and Economic Welfare (1974); W.K. Viscusi, J.M. Vernon and J.E. Harrington, Economics of Regulation and Antitrust (2nd ed., 1997). 5 On legal philosophies concerning moral and legal duties of assistance vis-à-vis `burdened societies', the `principle of just savings', a `property-owning democracy' promoting widespread ownership of economic and human capital, and on `distributive justice among peoples' see e.g. J. Rawls, The Law of Peoples (1999) chapters 15 and 16. Human rights law still lacks a coherent theory of economic and social human rights and of the corresponding legal obligations not only of national governments vis-à-vis their own citizens, but also vis-à-vis foreign citizens and the collective supply of `international public goods' through international organizations. On human rights and `global justice', see R.A. Falk, Human Rights Horizons: The Pursuit of Justice in a Globalizing World (2000).
	© 1990-2004 European Journal of International Law All comments and suggestions should be sent to webmaster This site is part of the Academy of European Law online, a joint partnership of the Jean Monnet Center at NYU School of Law and the Academy of European Law at the European University Institute. This file was last modified: Monday, September 30, 2002 04:13AM