Governance through Promotion and Persuasion: The 1998 ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work

Abstract

The current contribution will elaborate on the manner in which the Declaration of the International Labour Organization (ILO) on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work1 (hereinafter the 1998 Declaration) functions as an instrument of governance for the purpose of promotion and persuasion. The purpose of this activity is to improve the observance by States of certain principles contained in the 1998 Declaration. At the outset one should stress that this governance technique is a trade mark of the ILO as a whole and not only of the 1998 Declaration. The basic premise of the ILO is to rely on cooperation and dialogue rather than sanctions in its efforts to realize its goals. Public promotion and moral persuasion involve mobilizing peer pressure and shaming through the threat, or act, of exposing breaches of international labour standards to the international community. Technical assistance, which constitutes a particular concretisation of promotion and persuasion, ranges from advising on legislative reform and training of government officials to strengthening the capacity of governments, workers organisations and employers organisations for realizing international labour standards. The ILO does not have the means or the mandate to engage in governance techniques such as black-listing or the imposition of financial sanctions, as may be the case with, for example, the United Nations Security Council. Instead, its governance techniques are more comparable to those of many human rights supervisory bodies within the United Nations system. All of these systems rely on reporting, dialogue and technical assistance as a mechanism for enforc-ing certain international obligations and none of them possess any coercive powers.

The research was conducted during a sojourn at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Heidelberg (Germany), with the financial support of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. This contribution also forms part of a so-called VICI Project of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) titled: The emerging international constitutional order: the implications of hierarchy in international law for the coherence and legitimacy of international decision-making. The author would like to thank Mr. Lee Swepston and Ms. Anne Trebilcock for critical comments to earlier drafts.