Dr Fontana pursued a fruitful collaboration with the project’s scientific mentor, Prof. Jean Grugel, with whom she co-authored a paper comparing child labour politics in Bolivia and Argentina. The conclusions of this work (published in Human Rights Quarterly, 2017) illustrate how child labour is a good example of those norms where domestic translation has been particularly contested. Even in contexts characterized by similar macro-political processes and with a shared concern for children’s rights, models of compliance can lead to very different policy outcomes that diverge significantly from international conventions and guidelines. In this sense both Bolivia and Argentina are stories of extremes. Both countries take the norm seriously as well as their commitment to a rights-based agenda. In addition, both countries move beyond a responsive model of compliance. In Bolivia, domestic interpretations of human rights have prevailed over attachment to ILO conventions (“deviant compliance”), while in Argentina national policies exceed ILO recommendations (“over-compliance”). Ultimately, the evidence speaks to the need for a more nuanced understanding of what compliance means and the recognition of domestic inputs in its formulation.
The project’s second case study focuses on domestic workers’ rights and the implementation of the ILO Convention 189 in the Philippines. It is only in the last 15 years that the fight for equal treatment of domestic workers has been embraced by the international labour movement through the International Labour Organization 189 Convention Concerning Decent Work for Domestic Workers. The Philippines case study focuses on the impact that the international discussion on domestic workers rights had in the Philippines, the second country to ratify the 189 Convention and the only one in Asia. Preliminary results suggest that the discussion around the ratification of the Convention 189 triggered a process of legal reforms and cultural destigmatization of domestic workers. However, despite these advances, domestic workers in the Philippines still face significant challenges. The process of policy implementation of the new law has been very limited and most domestic workers still remain unaware of their rights. Finally, the effort of organizing domestic workers has been patchy and relatively limited, mainly because of tensions among social organizations and the longstanding reluctance of trade unions to take up the task.
This research is contributing to on-going debates on the impact of international human rights laws on domestic contexts. It is providing empirically grounded evidence on how these norms are contributing to reshape the relationships between different social actors and the state and potential elements of contention around their implementation. In policy terms, these results are relevant to identify areas that would require special attention in the implementation phase, particularly around the importance of including all relevant social actors early on in the discussion on ratification and implementation to avoid future tensions. It also highlights how the involvement of different types of social actors (e.g. NGOs, labor unions..) and the kind of leadership role they are prepared to take up will determine the outcomes of the pathways towards implementation. This is particularly true in the case of labor related human rights norms.
