This article considers the question of forced labor in the framework of human and social rights, as unfolding in the early Cold War period. A precise analysis of the discussion surrounding the convention on the abolition of forced labor within the International Labour Organization (ILO) between 1947 and 1957 forms a basis for my observations. The conflict between the two blocs, like the decolonization process, demarcated a favorable period for defining the juncture between human and social rights. The alliance between officials from southern and communist countries could have a catalyzing effect. Having had the intent of denouncing the Soviet labor camps at its inception, the convention in its final form reintroduced social rights as a condition of freedom of labor.
The two World Wars have long been studied from a national perspective. With the exception of the history of wartime diplomacy, which has a long tradition, 1 each nation involved in these conflicts has developed its own narrative. Wars are studied as national experiences leaving their legacies in a specific way on each society, government and parliament. Even battlefields tend to be nationalised, each historiography concentrating on its own dead and its own military contribution on the ground. 2 More recently, however, the transnational turn in history has prompted many historians to look beyond their national frontiers and to study wars as international experiences. Thus, battlefields have been reinterpreted as spaces where soldiers were fighting not only against each other but also alongside each other, sharing experiences, exchanging information and voicing the same grievances. 3 Even more important for our purpose is the emphasis put on the flow of political and social exchanges that took place during the wars. Indeed, each belligerent had to adapt to its enemies, which meant observing them in order to learn from their respective experiences, experiments and policies. In this sense, wars undeniably promoted the circulation of knowledge and expertise, and gain from being studied as periods of particularly intense transnational exchanges. With this perspective in mind, international organisations become particularly relevant fields of research, in that they encourage, give shape to and depend on these international exchanges. Nevertheless, the role and place of international organisations in wartime and more specifically during the Second World War has generally been overlooked. This should not come as a surprise. Given that the League of Nations (LoN) and associated organisations such as the International Labour Organisation (ILO) were cre
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