One of my most daunting moments as WTO Director-General was the day I received a doctor honoris causa from the University of Geneva in 2009 in the company of South Africa’s Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former UN Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson. Not only was I sharing a distinction with a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and one of the people I most admire, I also had to deliver a speech on the place of human rights in a globalizing world. Globalization and human rights; they are for many a case of chalk and cheese! Hadn’t the Peace Prize laureate himself been critical of many aspects of globalization? So it was with some trepidation that I put forward my ideas on the issues, and particularly the issues surrounding human rights and trade, which is the part of globalization that – obviously – most closely concerns the WTO.

Trade and human rights might indeed seem an unusual association of concepts. After all, in the eyes of many, trade is a villain, a symbol of neoliberalism, mercantilism and capitalism; it is the tool through which powerful multinational corporations impose their writ over human beings, impairing social, economic and cultural rights. The history of the relationship between trade and human rights is a history of suspicion and to some extent of deliberate reciprocal ignorance. The WTO has been depicted as a leading instrument of a globalization in which the market takes precedence over individuals and might over right. It was not so long ago that its ministerial meetings drew large, often violent, demonstrations of protest from anti-globalization groups.