A Study on the Relationship Between Trade and Human Rights
Trade liberalization provided new economic opportunities while simultaneously increasing risks and vulnerabilities among people globally, including sexual harassment in maquiladora factories, food commodity speculation, and intellectual property rights rules that compromise health benefits.
Scholars offer various perspectives on how best to address these issues. Some, such as Compa et al 1996, suggest including social clauses into trade agreements as a possible remedy.
Impact of Trade on Human Rights
Global trade has provided economic expansion opportunities but also led to human rights abuses such as sweatshops and child, slave and unfree labour practices that were common prior to globalization but have come to greater public notice due to capital flowing freely between borders.
While some of these abuses stem from domestic policies, their primary source is due to economic growth as the overarching goal of trade policy. This leaves little space for other issues like environmental degradation, social instability and the protection of fundamental human rights to be addressed adequately.
Negotiations of trade agreements often takes place in an opaque atmosphere that excludes non-governmental organizations and intergovernmental bodies concerned with human rights from taking part. But this needn’t be the case: promising new models have emerged which show how trade can become an inclusive framework for people-centred development while simultaneously driving economic growth.
Economic Growth and Human Rights
Growth should be balanced against ensuring quality public services, affordable social security systems and living wages, decent working conditions and an inhabitable planet. Furthermore, inequality that stands in the way of reaching internationally agreed objectives such as the Sustainable Development Goals must also be tackled to leave no one behind.
Human rights economies place people and the planet at the centre of economic policies, investment decisions, consumer choices, and business models with the aim of measurably increasing human rights enjoyment for all. They also strengthen State capacity to regulate to prevent abuses by powerful corporations while safeguarding vulnerable communities from predatory private sector interests.
Econometric analyses support the assertion that respecting fundamental civil and political rights leads to economic development. Yet there is evidence to show otherwise; economic growth without wide and equal distribution cannot lead to human rights realisation (EASTERLY 2001). Furthermore, high debt servicing burdens deprive countries of essential resources necessary to invest in social protection programs or other essential public services.
Economic Growth and Gender
Gender equality is a cornerstone of sustainable development. Expanding economic opportunities for women can boost economic output by increasing productivity and spurring innovation; additionally, this may enable families to better afford education and healthcare for their children and improve family wellbeing overall.
This study investigates the relationship between gender inequality and economic growth using panel data. A mixed effects model with control for country-specific observable characteristics shows that countries with more equal economic rights for women experience greater GDP per capita growth.
This research makes an original contribution to existing literature on the impact of gender equality on economic growth, demonstrating how both gender inequality and sex ratio at birth affect economic growth by impacting investment decisions. Furthermore, its results suggest that its effect is especially prominent among export-oriented economies where lower wage gaps between males and females act as signals of profitability for investment decisions.
Economic Growth and Environment
Global trade can have serious ramifications on people’s rights to health, food, water and development. To ensure these rights are safeguarded through trade agreements and global rules that do not undermine them is of vital importance – this requires human rights-sensitive negotiation processes as well as sanctions that prioritize respecting basic standards of international law regarding human rights.
Understanding the relationship between economic growth and environmental degradation is also essential. American experience shows us that GDP can be decoupled from environmental pollution – as evidenced by the Environmental Kuznets Curve.
As well, governments must prioritize people-centred development instead of GDP as a measure of success; Bhutan pursues Gross National Happiness while Bolivia and Ecuador have included world views of Buen Vivir into their constitutions and governance structures – this will ensure future generations enjoy equal access to opportunities as we do now.