Book Review: Vakverenigingsvrijheid in Latijns Amerika in het Licht van de Normen van de Internationale Arbeidsorganisatie
| Published date | 01 June 1995 |
| Date | 01 June 1995 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/016934419501300212 |
| Subject Matter | Part D: DocumentationBook Review |
Documentation
'has given to the interests' of indigenous women, children, families and the economic
rights of indigenous persons' an inadequate attention, this in spite of the fact that all the
rights of which he speaks which are lacking in the draft have been established in
international treaties, thus in norms legally binding for States parties, or in previous
Declarations, with the same legal value as the draft Declaration might achieve.
Furthermore, the book criticizes that the draft Declaration has not included a specific
statement that indigenous peoples have the obligation to respect internationally recognized
human rights standards when it comes to matters of equality between men and women and
has not condemned practices and policies of inequality on the basis of sex, when there
is an Article 43 which particularly addresses the problemby setting forth that '[a]ll the
rights and freedoms recognized herein are equally guaranteed to male and female
indigenous individuals'.
Much better qua organization and contents are Chapters 5, 6 and 7. The first
compares the draft with the two ILO Conventions on Indigenous Peoples; the second
gives an appraisal of the rights to land and self-determination and the last one analyzes
the weaknesses and strengths of the draft. Here one can see that the author examined
carefully the contents of the draft and decided to express his opinion on several topics,
stating correctly, in my opinion, some of the several problems of the draft, which does
not solve very successfully the antagonistic interests of indigenous peoples and of states.
Hannen
van
der
Wilt, Vakverenigingsvrijheid in
Latijns
Amerika in het lichtvan de
normenvan deInternationale
Arbeidsorganisatie
[Relation to the International
Labour
Organisation
Standards],
Ph.D. thesis, Thela Publishers, Amsterdam 1993'
For
those interested not only in the creation of instruments for the defence and protection
of human rights, but also and in particular in the implementation machinery connected
with such instruments, the International Labour Organisation (lLO) is of special interest.
This UN agency, responsible for labour affairs and social policy in a broad sense, had
built an impressive 'international labour code' of some 180 Conventions in the seventy-
five years
of
its existence.
It
created a sophisticated system of supervision of the
application ofratified Conventions and several special complaintprocedures. This system
of standard setting and implementation has functioned remarkably well in the past and
continues to do so at present, despite the fact that is has to do without penal sanctions.
Apparently, Governments of Member States as well as workers' and employers'
organisations from these Member States (which can operate totally independently from
their Governments in the ILO) consider it to be balanced and fair. One can certainly find
several examples where ILO pressure on Governments which violated their obligations
was unsuccessful. But these examples are easily outnumbered by cases of progress and
eventual success. As far as I can see, there is no system of international standard setting
in the field of human rights which is as effective as the ILO's (it should be noted that,
in addition to a significant number of human and trade union/employers' rights,
thelLO's
'labour code' consists of many technical Conventions dealing with, inter alia, social
security, labour market policies, working conditions and working environment).
Despite all this, public attention for the ILO and its work is modest. The work of the
yearly International Labour Conference, where 40-50 Governments are interrogated by
Staff Member International Affairs Federatie Nederlandse Vakbeweging (FNV) [Dutch Federation Trade
Unions].
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