The World Trade Organization and Import Bans in Response to Violations of Fundamental Labour Rights

Trade and labor are connected in many ways. One aspect of their relationship revolves around the question whether products that are made in violation of labor rights should be banned from the markets of importing States. In the negotiation process which led to the establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO), this issue proved to be highly contentious. Since then, not much has changed on the political level. Yet, it is not unheard of for States to raise import bans in response to human rights violations in exporting States. Therefore, it is likely that the WTO dispute settlement mechanism may at some point be confronted with a claim that one of the WTO Members has violated its WTO obligations because it has adopted an import ban in response to labor rights violations that occur in the exporting State. This book investigates how the WTO dispute settlement mechanism should deal with such a case by looking into WTO law, general international law, and the relationship between these two fields.