Bartels: WTO Law Aspects of Clean Trade

Lorand Bartels (Univ. of Cambridge - Law) has posted WTO Law Aspects of Clean Trade. Here's the abstract:

The Clean Trade project is designed to block the importation of natural resources that have been exploited in violation of the human right to permanent sovereignty over these natural resources (‘exploited resources’). To this end, the Clean Trade project envisages that states would impose a direct embargo on exploited resources, and would impose duties on products from intermediate states that import exploited resources. This note, written in the context of the Clean Trade Project, examines the WTO legality of these two mechanisms. It concludes that, most likely, these mechanisms are WTO-legal. In the event that they are not, this note also considers a third option, namely, a waiver from WTO obligations, along the lines of the waiver for the Kimberley Process for ‘conflict diamonds’.