Universal Rights? Standard-Setting against the Backdrop of Late Colonialism, Decolonization and the Cold War

Abstract

The concept of human rights, which since the Declaration of Philadelphia had provided a new intellectual basis for standard-setting, was the perfect vehicle through which to lend emphasis and moral credit to the claim to universality behind the ILO’s integrated approach to development.¹ In contrast to the international labour standards of the pre-war period, human rights were, by definition, universally valid. The International Labour Office, then, had every reason to be satisfied with the outcome of the human rights debates of the 1950s. The ILC adopted a whole series of Conventions which reinforced the ideal of a democratic path into modernity. However, the discussions surrounding their adoption showed that the principles of the Declaration of Philadelphia were not unanimously accepted within the Organization. The continuing refusal of the colonial powers to afford full validity to human rights in the territories under their rule, and the Soviet Union’s fundamental opposition to some of the Organization’s basic principles, weakened the ILO’s claim to universality and undermined the coherence of its values. The political and symbolic weight which the human rights discourse possessed against the background of the Cold War and the conflict between the colonial powers and the newly independent States in Asia and Africa had a range of effects. It led on the one hand to the adoption of some particularly far-reaching instruments, but on the other showed up all the more clearly the unbridgeable differences within the Organization. And in the case of freedom of association, these differences forced the ILO to make practical compromises that went to the very core of the concepts it advanced.