WTO규범이 식량주권에 미치는 영향

This article is an enquiry into the right to Food that is either incompletely addressed or not addressed at all by the WTO Agreement on Agriculture(AoA). Our analysis from a legal perspective shows that some of the present rules, or the lack thereof, can act as disincentives for global food security. WTO rules deal with market access and a level playing field for competition between different suppliers. While the Objective of inhanced welfare is certainly in line with R2F obligations we have to acknowledge that the implementation tool-kit envisaged under the WTO agreements is on partially congruent with R2F instruments. While the former is mainly to address trade, production, circumvention and competition-distortion at the expense of other suppliers, the latter deal with an obligation to protect, respect and remedy. This means that the role of trade have to implement in ensuring the R2F, as long as the WTO stops short of formulating a general obligation to cooperate in the sense of Article 11(2) ICESCR. WTO today allows measures which are prohibited under codified international humanitarian law, such as food dumping. This assessment of the WTO rules applicable to trade in agriculture leads us to conclude that the present subsidy and regulatory leeway available to rich countries prevents a level playing field for the trade in food. This ‘freedom to dump’ violates the R2F obligation to which each signatory of the ICESCR is committed. In particular, Stating export restrictions limiting the global food supply and surplus disposal through food aid, WTO framework does not and will not even follow the ‘do no harm’ principle of public international law. Four possibilities for taking the R2F into account at the level of the WTO negotiations and rule-setting: (1) inserting an explicit reference to human rights into the AoA;(2) interpreting the R2F ‘into’ the AoA and Article ⅩⅩ GATT-along; (3) recognizing the R2F as inalienable rights pre-existing laws and treaties (jus cogens to be recognized as a general exception to trade rules), and which therefore must take precedence in case of conflicts; (4) adopting a new trade rule recognizing that the ICESCR implies the obligation not to conclude treaties that harm the R2F. The R2F is not a matter of political will and domestic policy space. It implies a legal obligation under codified humanitarian law to improve multilateral trade rules so as to ensure that as a minimum, they do no more harm and, better still, that they contribute to making food available in a sufficient quantity and quality to all people in need.