Mute to massacres: why did the ILO, and its constituents, fail to respond?

Abstract

18 | International Union Rights | 26/2 FOCUS | THE ILO AT 100 Two appalling cases of the mass killing of strikers in late 2011 and mid 2012 made headlines around the world. The ILO has taken a lead in responding to the most serious human rights violations against trade unionists in numerous situations, and it should have been at the forefront of the international response to these situations, yet it barely acknowledged the killings. In taking stock of the Organisation’s response to these cases over the past seven years some important lessons can be learned. In December 2011 police cracked down on a workers’ rally in Kazakhstan, killing at least 16 people, while dozens more received gunshot wounds as a result of police violence. Since the Zhanaozen shootings, the compliance of Kazakhstan with core trade union rights under Convention 87 has been examined by the ILO’s Committee of Experts (CEACR) in their 2012, 2015, 2017, 2018 and 2019 reports, but none of these reports made any mention of the killing of the Zhanaozen strikers. In 2015, the ’deaths’ of the Zhanaozen protesters were vaguely referenced for the first time in the discussions of the Conference Committee on the Application of Standards (CCAS), but the Committee didn’t engage with these references, and no relevant conclusions were drawn. No Complaints or Representations were raised under Articles 24 or 26 of the ILO Constitution. And no case was ever brought to the Committee on Freedom of Association (CFA). In 2017 the ITUC did file a CFA case on Kazakhstan, but the publicly available summary of this case only mentions the 2014 changes to trade union law. In August 2012 a reckless and ill-judged police operation to disperse strikers in South Africa led to a bloody massacre during which military-grade automatic weapons were fired, killing 34 and injuring a great many others. In the immediate aftermath hundreds of strikers were arrested and charged – absurdly – with the murder of those shot by police. Since the Marikana massacre South Africa’s compliance with Convention 87 has been examined in 2013 (when the case was not mentioned), then again in 2016 (four years after the massacre), when the CEACR briefly acknowledged the massacre, which it called, tentatively, ‘the violent death of numerous workers during a strike’. In 2019 the CEACR repeated these comments. There has been no discussion at all of Marikana in the Committee on the Application of Standards. No Complaints or Representations were raised under Articles 24 or 26 of the ILO Constitution. No case has been brought to the Committee on Freedom of Association. The first thing to understand about the ILO’s lack of engagement is that no cases were opened for the simple reason that nobody filed a complaint. In both countries the established national unions had rivalries with the victims and their organisations and so they didn’t raise cases. And several international union officers who attended an ICTUR meeting in 2015 explained their inaction on the grounds that none of their affiliates asked them to file cases. We also know that in both cases the victims had been essentially acting as ad hoc committees, lacking in knowledge or experience of the international human rights supervisory bodies, and may have been unaware that their cases could have been brought before the ILO. Another critical factor was the employer walk out from the ILO Committee on the Application of Standards, which occurred in 2012, six months after Zhanaozen, and two months prior to Marikana. The employers demand that the supervisory committees cease discussing right to strike cases is doubtless a critical factor in why neither the CEACR nor the CAS discussed the cases in 2012, 2013, 2014 or 2015. The employers group thus shares with the workers group a good deal of the responsibility for the ILO’s failure to engage in these cases. A key rationale for the existence of the International Centre for Trade Union Rights has long been our understanding that ‘wherever unions are unable or unwilling to promote and protect workers’ fundamental human rights, there is a need for an independent NGO that focuses on the special issues faced by unions and workers’. We...