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Despite the fact that the World Trade Organization (WTO) deals with international trade, there are constant calls for including social clauses in trade agreements to reflect a more flexible and balanced approach towards human rights issues in particular in this case labor rights. This is why this debate has been on going for quite sometimes even though it is still unlikely that the WTO would indeed any time soon change its attitude towards this topic. In fact, the organization has repeatedly expressed its unwillingness to amend the trade agreements for the sake of including new provisions related to human rights. In the chapter, “Economic Globalization and Social Rights: The Role of the International Labor Organization and the WTO,” the author Claudio Di Turi analyzed the possibility or the potential that the WTO would in the future include social clauses in the agreements after the constant calls for the adoption of such approach over the years since the days of which the idea of establishing a trade organization emerged on the international scene in particular after the second world war. For this reason, the author even examined the different approaches adopted back then and the general attitude that existed regarding human rights and more importantly social clauses related to labor rights. In fact, the idea after the second world war was to establish a link between trade regulations and human rights in this case workers rights. Unlike this period witnessing the constant refusal of the WTO to acknowledge the existence of such interaction, the post war period was characterized by a great optimism and openness towards the discussion of the potential interplay between trade and labor rights. Yet, such attitude has completely vanished with the WTO that is objecting to the inclusion of social clauses despite the pressure exercised by human rights activists but also the International Labor Organization (ILO) to do so. However, the WTO has always expressed its respect of international labor standards through the different conferences that took place since its establishment in the 1990s. Nevertheless, it also gave priority to countries development in particular low waged countries on the expense of including social rights in trade agreements for protectionist purposes. The WTO additionally stated that the ILO is the competent authority to deal with these issues. As such, these matters would be dealt with better at the ILO instead of the WTO. In this context, it is important to mention that bilateral and multilateral trade and investment treaties or the General System of Preferences (GSP) Schemes of States or groups of States include social clauses. Thus, the general negative attitude of the WTO regarding this topic is seen as slowly changing towards the recognition of the link between trade and social rights such as labor rights which would open new doors for cooperation with the ILO. Yet, that does not mean that the current general attitude will disappear any time soon as a result of these existing exceptions. This is obvious for instance when it comes to the discussions revolving around these issues at the Doha round which resulted in a lack of consensus among the participants over these matters.
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