Can WTO Member States Rely on Citizen Concerns to Prevent Corporations from Importing Goods Made from Child Labour?

Abstract

am the recipient of the 2016 PhD scholarship of Cardiff University's Department of Law (UK). My utmost thanks to Cedric Ryngaert and the reviewers for their generous comments on previous versions of this essay, as well as to all those involved in the production of this issue. This essay benefited greatly from exchanges with Ken Peattie, Frank Goedertier and Theo Raedschelders. Johannes Nissen, Titia Kloos, Peter Morris and Nick Cleary are thanked for proofreading. All mistakes remain my own.

Push, pull, dance: Approaches to address labour abuse in public health supply chains

“…The US federal government is in fact the largest purchaser of goods in the world (Conrad et al, 2015; Methven O’Brien et al, 2016: 1; Pietropaoli et al, 2021: 5; Vanpeperstraete, 2021: 52). However, the effectiveness of these bans has been questioned when invoked as a zero-tolerance approach, rather than as a last-resort mechanism, to be used in cases when cooperation with suppliers to remediate the abuses has not been feasible (Nissen, 2018: 70). Bans may even undermine collaborative approaches focused on prevention and remediation of human and labour rights abuses (Giaonpoulus, 2021: 28, 31), while potentially discouraging transparency and the provision of remedy altogether.…”

Editorial<br>Accountability of Multinational Corporations for Human Rights Abuses

“…Aleydis Nissen submits that states and the European Union may want to ban imports of goods which have been produced in substandard conditions, particularly in cases of child labour. 11 From a corporate accountability perspective, an import ban could pressure corporations into complying with higher labour standards when producing goods overseas. Nissen argues that such a trade-restrictive measure may well be in keeping with requirements of the World Trade Organization (WTO) insofar as labour exploitation offends the 'public morality' of citizens of the importing state, who may want to avoid association, as citizens-consumers, with human rights abuses committed in the context of an overseas production process.…”