"SOS, International Law" by Sohini Chatterjee and Daniel Stewar
- Jun 15
- 4 min read
In the Preamble to the UN Charter, Member States pledged “to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained.” Any stocktaking on the 75th anniversary of the UN’s founding must consider the state of the state of global legal norms. On this front, one could not but paint a very dark portrait: the World Trade Organization in disarray; human rights laws ignored and discarded; treaties designed to tackle the existential threat of climate change seemingly facing greater attack despite ever greater evidence of the dangers facing the planet. International law’s futility, its powerlessness, seems never more apparent to all but true and misguided believers.
Yet this period can be taken to demonstrate the eternal truth of the global legal system: it is only as good as the belief and support it can engender, and only as effective as its impact on the search for economic development, environmental protection, and human dignity for all.
The best way to mark this anniversary is to make international law face up to its failings and get all voices involved in shaping its content and securing its enforcement. Only when the Peoples of small and developing States lead the fight for the rule of law, will the pledge of “We the Peoples,” as set out in the Charter’s Preamble, be made a reality.
Daniel Stewart is the Founder and Executive Director, and Sohini Chatterjee is Legal Advisor, Independent International Legal Advocates (IILA), a non-profit international law advisory and training organization, working to enable more effective and fair participation of small and developing States in the creation and application of international law. independentila.org
__________________________________________________________________________________
CENTERPOINT NOW Commentary
Informal Labor
According to the International Labor Office, 60% of the world’s workforce consists of
informal workers, representing approximately two billion people worldwide. (1) “The two billion women and men who make their living in the informal economy are deprived of decent working conditions. Evidence shows that most people enter the informal economy not by choice, but as a consequence of a lack of opportunities in the formal economy and in
the absence of other means of livelihood.”
With 93% of the world’s informal employmen in emerging and developing countries, rural
areas and the agriculture industry are by far the most affected. Globally, 93.6 % of the global workforce in the agricultural industry is estimated to be informal. However, in emerging and developing countries, all sectors have a high level of informality. While men are estimated to make up 63% of the world’s informal labor, in low and lower-middle income countries, a higher number of women are in informal labor than men. Moreover, “even though globally there are fewer women than men in informal employment, women in the informal economy are more often found in the most vulnerable situations, for instance as domestic workers, home-based workers or contributing family workers, than their male counterparts.”
Sofía Mauricio Bacilio, Coordinator of the NGO, AGTR-La Casa de Panchita, that works
to protect domestic workers’ rights in Peru and ensure only people of legal working age
exercise this profession, notes that there are currently 381,012 domestic workers in Peru, of whom 95.4% are women, 91.7% work informally, and 50% of whom earn less than a
living wage. (2) Their characteristics include: having begun to work at a very young age;
migrating from the poorest areas of Peru in search of opportunity, or being second generation domestic workers born in the cities to which their mothers migrated; not having completed basic education, or young women who have completed basic, and sometimes technical education.
In 2003, Peru passed a law for domestic workers which is considered discriminatory as it is said to guarantee only half the rights provided to other workers. In 2018, Peru ratified the ILO Convention 189 on Domestic Workers. (3) The Convention stipulates that:
“Each Member shall set a minimum age for domestic workers” (Article 4); “Each
Member shall take measures to ensure that domestic workers enjoy effective protection
against all forms of abuse, harassment and violence.” (Article 5); “Each Member shall
take measures towards ensuring equal treatment between domestic workers and
workers generally in relation to normal hours of work, overtime compensation, periods
of daily and weekly rest and paid annual leave in accordance with national laws,
regulations or collective agreements, taking into account the special characteristics
of domestic work.” (Article 10);” Each Member shall take measures to ensure that
domestic workers enjoy minimum wage coverage, where such coverage exists, and
that remuneration is established without discrimination based on sex.” (Article 11)
(1) Women and men in the informal economy: a statistical picture (third edition) / International Labor Office – Geneva: ILO, 2018
(2) Information based on the national survey “ENAHO -2018 (Encuesta Nacional de Hogares sobre Condiciones de Vida y Pobreza).
(3) ilo.org
__________________________________________________________________________________
"SOS, International Law" by Sohini Chatterjee and Daniel Stewar was originally published in the UN 75th anniversary issue of CENTERPOINT NOW "Are we there yet?", the publication and ©2020 of World Council of Peoples for the United Nations, co-produced with Streaming Museum.