Looking Beyond the Word 'Trade': A Closer Look at the Human Rights and WTO Relationship

The WTO is often considered to be a mercantilist organization based on principles that ignore human rights and trade and human rights are generally considered to be completely distinct with no effect on one another. These misapprehensions often lead to confusion and many people see the relationship between human rights standards and the WTO principles to be conflictual instead of mutually supportive. This paper aims to change these conceptions and to show how trade policy-makers and human rights defenders can actually work together. It looks at the context in which the GATT, and later the WTO, emerged; analyses the organization’s objectives and principles and it finds that the WTO is based on a human right pedestal. It then identifies and describes the human rights which are often affected by trade policies and it shows how the WTO implements mechanisms to reduce the negative impacts. The paper goes on to argue that human rights defenders should look beyond the word "trade" and try to understand the WTO’s principles and objectives and that trade policy-makers, especially those in developing countries, should always try to identify the effects of any policy that they adopt on human rights before implementation. The paper concludes that the WTO looks bad because governments lack good faith and do not respect their commitments.