When (Not) to Trade with Autocrats: Complicity, Exploitation, and Human Rights

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin K. W. Ip
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Labor Conditions ◽  
Trade Relations ◽  
Special Obligation ◽  
Trade Sanctions ◽  
Autocratic Regimes ◽  
Transnational Trade

Abstract Transnational trade is at the heart of the global economy. Trade relations often transcend both ideological divides and regime type. Trading with autocratic regimes, however, raises significant moral issues. In their recent book, On Trade Justice, Mathias Risse and Gabriel Wollner argue that trade with autocratic regimes is morally permissible only under a very limited set of circumstances. This article discusses the morally permissible trade policies that liberal democracies ought to adopt toward autocratic regimes. Liberal democracies trading with autocratic regimes have a special obligation to improve the human rights conditions in these regimes. This duty is partly based on their complicity in human rights violations and on the fact that the democracies benefit from these violations in their trading relationships. Their responsibility goes beyond the improvement of labor conditions and requires various strategies such as imposing trade sanctions and export controls, and making trade conditional on human rights performance.

scholarly journals The Political Economy of the EU Approach to the Rohingya Crisis in Myanmar

2022 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Arlo Poletti ◽  
Daniela Sicurelli
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
The Political ◽  
Chinese Enterprises ◽  
Trade Relations ◽  
Choice Making ◽  
Trade Sanctions ◽  
The Government ◽  
Trade Preferences ◽  
The Eu

European institutions have repeatedly represented the EU as an actor that can use the attractiveness of its market to promote human rights internationally. From this perspective, EU trade sanctions represent a hard power tool to push the government of states accused of major human rights violations to abide by international law. In its reaction to the Rohingya crisis in 2018, despite the European Parliament’s call for the lifting of Myanmar’s trade preferences, the Council of the EU stated that it would rather tackle the problem by taking a “constructive approach” based on dialogue. We provide a political-economy explanation of this choice, making a plausible case that the political pressures from European importers and exporters, not to jeopardise trade relations with Myanmar, prevailed over the demands of European protectionist groups and NGOs advocating a tougher position. The firms interested in maintaining preferential trade relations with Myanmar were primarily motivated by a desire to avoid a disruption of trade and investment links within global value chains (GVCs) so that they could continue competing with Chinese enterprises.

A Qualitative study on human rights and labor conditions of rehabilitation specialists

2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 69-85
Author(s):  
Sung Youl Cho ◽  
Yong Chan Byun ◽  
Geun Chang Song ◽  
Ye Sook Youn
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Labor Conditions

In Lieu of a Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Linarelli ◽  
Margot E Salomon ◽  
Muthucumaraswamy Sornarajah
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Current State ◽  
Neoliberal Capitalism ◽  
Transformative Potential ◽  
International Economic Law ◽  
Human Rights Norms

This chapter recaps the main themes of the volume, ie that the international law of the global economy is in a state of disorder. Claims about the justice, fairness, or benefits of the current state of international law as it relates to the global economy are fanciful. A more credible picture emerges when one considers who is protected, against what, and those relations that are valued and those that are not. Moreover, these claims above all require a suspension of a reflective attitude about what international law actually says and does. When it comes to international economic law, power is masked behind a veil of neutrality when it certainly is not neutral in the interests it protects and offends. As for international human rights law, it overlooks the ways in which it props up extreme capitalism foreclosing the possibility of transformative structural change to neoliberal capitalism. In its most radical areas, human rights norms have been blocked from making demands on the design of the global economy precisely because of their transformative potential. Among the central critiques of international law presented in this book is that international law must be justifiable to those who are subject to it.

Corporate (Non-)Accountability and Human Rights

2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 503-523
Author(s):  
Stéfanie Khoury
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Codes Of Conduct ◽  
Washington Consensus ◽  
Corporate Accountability ◽  
Criminal Courts ◽  
Race To The Bottom ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
Binding Mechanisms

Abstract The role of business in violations of human rights has been at the heart of international debates for decades. As early as the 1970s attempts were made at the UN by Global South nations (known as the G-77) to establish internationally-binding mechanisms to address corporate violations of human rights. Ultimately, those attempts were watered down into “codes of conduct”. In the early 1990s, the “Washington Consensus” was used to steer states to deregulate and restructure their economies in a race-to-the-bottom that placed emphasis upon integrating the global economy over human rights and environmental protections. Although corporate violations existed before, it was only at this juncture that many human rights cases were brought into public view. Some litigation was pursued, but it was most often in tort, and sometimes in criminal courts. This article argues that the existing regional human rights courts have bolstered corporate human rights, while at the same time have remained on the sidelines of addressing corporate accountability. The emergent ASEAN human rights system has not yet developed a human rights court. The article suggests that there are key grassroots movements shaping human rights discourses around corporate accountability through the region and that these offer exciting prospects for an alternative approach to addressing corporate accountability through a prospective supervisory mechanism.

Human rights abuses at the limits of the law: Legal instabilities and vulnerabilities in the ‘Global War on Terror’

2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Sanders
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Legal Compliance ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Global War On Terror ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Indefinite Detention ◽  
Protection Of Human Rights ◽  
Global War

AbstractLaw following and law breaking are often conceptualised as polar opposites. However, authorities in liberal democracies increasingly deploy a strategy of what I callplausible legalityin order to secure immunity and legitimacy for proscribed practices. Rather than ignore or suspend law, they construct legal justifications for human rights abuses and other dubious policies, obscuring the distinction between legal compliance and non-compliance. I argue this is possible because instabilities in legal rules make them vulnerable to manipulation and exploitation. By tracing American rationales for contentious ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’, indefinite detention, and ‘targeted killing’ practices in the ‘Global War on Terror’, I show that law need not always be abandoned or radically reconstituted to achieve troubling ends and that rule structures enable certain patterns of violation while limiting others. The international prohibition on torture is robust and universal, but provides vague definitions open to interpretation. Detention and lethal targeting regulations are jurisdictionally layered and contextually complex, creating loopholes and gaps. The article concludes by reflecting on implications for the protection of human rights. While law is not wholly indeterminate, human rights advocates must constantly advocate shared legal understandings that constrain state violence.

scholarly journals Economic and non-economic values and objectives in the EU’s international trade: Normative tensions, actors and processes

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Urszula Jaremba ◽  
Machiko Kanetake ◽  
Ingrid Koning
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Economic Values ◽  
Trade Relations ◽  
Trade Law ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
The One ◽  
The Impact

This Europe and the World: A law review special issue comprises selected papers presented at a RENFORCE workshop on the theme of tensions between the EU’s trade and non-economic values, held at Utrecht University in November 2017. The symposium addresses normative dilemmas underlying the EU’s trade law and policy. Normative dilemmas subsist between, on the one hand, the EU’s basic pursuit of its commercial interests and trade liberalization, and, on the other hand, the EU’s mandate to promote and safeguard a number of non-economic values, including human rights and sustainable development. The journal symposium aims to unveil normative tensions existing in the EU’s trade and investment policy, and understand some of the key actors and processes through which normative tensions are created and also mitigated. While the tensions between economic and non-economic values in the EU’s trade law and policy have been extensively discussed in literature, the present symposium highlights some of the recent developments in the EU’s trade relations, analyses not only human rights but also sustainable development, and examines the impact of new technologies.

Religion as a Predictor for the Support of Judicial Human Rights?

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 164-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans-Georg Ziebertz
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Age Group ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Empirical Survey ◽  
Research Survey ◽  
The People ◽  
Low Degree ◽  
Constitutional Right ◽  
Political Perception

Abstract Human rights are the cornerstones of modern liberal democracies, but this does not mean that they can be taken for granted. Human rights need the support of the people. But how willing are people to support them? This question points to the problem of the legitimacy of human rights. This research paper focuses on judicial human rights such as freedom from torture, the rights of accused persons and the inviolability of the home. A quantitative, empirical survey was carried out among 2,244 German youth in the age group of 16 years, and this paper explores what attitudes these young German respondents have towards the rights referred to above. The assumption is that several other factors influence attitudes towards judicial rights; the paper considers human dignity, which is a constitutional right in Germany, but also religious beliefs, personality traits and society’s socio-political perception. The findings show that only two judicial rights (freedom from torture and the inviolability of the home) are positively valued by the respondents. From all predictors included in the research survey, the two strongest are sex (being female) and a low degree of authoritarianism. The comparison of religious groups shows that Muslims differ strongly from Catholics, Protestants and non-religious youth.

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