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Anuradha Mittal answers the following question

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Question

what is the purpose of public international law if there are no effective enforcement mechanisms to apply it? Maria Kyriacou


Answer

Anuradha Mittal: Well, it is not just about that because we cannot enforce some of the laws or we have not seen them being enforced that we think that there is no point in having international law because we have seen when something is wanted it is done. In the case of the World Trade Organization, the free markets laws, they are being implemented because the people who really want to implement them make sure that they are implemented. But at the same time, if we look at other things such as say freedom from hunger; now that is a right which is ensured through the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Right. It is a right which comes from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And we have seen that even if they have not being enforced but people, social movements are using it to demand that right, whether it is the farmers’ movement which talks about freedom from hunger as being an international human right or we look at people and communities who are struggling to have access to water, they talk about water as a human right. And that has become an important enforcement mechanism because that is helping communities galvanize for the basic rights to come together and to start demanding justice, and I think that is very important and that’s how most of the human rights struggles have been won. So the fact we have it on paper, of course, we have to make sure it can only have change when it is enforced in the power of making it be applied or to be enforced lies within each one of us.