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International Union Rights: Journal of the International Centre for Trade Union Rights

ICTUR's quarterly journal features news, opinions and articles from leading labour movement commentators worldwide. Regular contributors include trade unionists, labour lawyers, academics, journalists and human rights workers. You can read the editorial from the latest edition below.

Recent issues have focussed on subjects including Child Labour and Health and Safety. Other issues have focussed on trade union rights in a particular country or continent including Australia and the Americas. In every issue the 'focus' is complimented by a rounded selection of articles on other topics. Follow this link for details of contributors and features from previous issues of IUR.

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Editorial Board: Professor Roy Adams, David Bacon, Daniel Blackburn (Editor), David Doorey, Professor Keith Ewing (Legal Editor), Dan Gallin, Colin Fenwick, Kally Forest, Steve Gibbons, Professor John Hendy QC, Carolyn Jones (Chair), Eric Lee, Professor Jill Murray, Rory O'Neil, Tom Sibley, Nora Wintour, Dr Charles Woolfson.

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Editorial: unions and conflict resolution (IUR, volume 15.1, May 2008)
This edition brings together a collection of articles that consider the role that trade unions have in societies afflicted by civil war, or other violent social conflict, and includes articles on Northern Ireland, Sierra Leone and Colombia. It illustrates the vitality that trade unions can have as social and political institutions that promote democratic process by facilitating dialogue, identifying shared values in sharply divided societies and representing and consolidating the political participation and representation of the most marginalised and invisible members of society.

We include an article by Stephen Nolan, co-director of Trademark, a partner of the Irish Confederation of Trade Unions, who outlines the historical role played by trade unions and the challenges they faced, in bridging political divisions during the war in Northern Ireland. Since peace and Ireland’s wholesale adoption of neoliberalism as dominant economic model, the article raises some very interesting questions about the scope labour now has in bringing about the long-hoped for socio-economic advances for ordinary people associated with peace.

Pia Simonsen, Rotary World Peace Fellow at Duke University, provides an analysis of the challenges that face trade unions in terms of their effectiveness as representative institutions whilst operating in unstable environments. She highlights the key areas where trade unions can enhance peace-building efforts, including training and institution-building, conflict management and the mobilisation of people on the basis of equality of opportunity, thus bridging ethnic, religious, race, and class barriers.

Mban Khan, who worked closely with the labour movement in Sierra Leone and is now Education Officer at ITUC-Africa in Kenya, gives an overview of the brutal civil war that afflicted this country for more than a decade, and the role the national trade union federation SLLC took in efforts to encourage national solidarity and co-operation. The SLLC established the National Coordinating Committee for Peace (NCCP) which brought together more than 60 civil society organisations and provided a democratic forum for citizens to engage in discussion on the conflict, the peace process and other issues that would determine the future of their country.

We include an interesting overview of the part played by Africa’s labour leaders and trade unions in mobilizing against colonial rule, from a recent speech by Hassan Sunmonu, Secretary-General of the African Organisation of Trade Union Unity, and ICTUR Vice-President.

Miguel Puerto sheds some light on the different forces at work in Colombia’s contemporary violent conflict and the threat to a credible peace process, when trade unions – as vital elements in the promotion of democratic governance and the peaceful reconciliation of group interests – are attacked and persecuted precisely for having this role.
Finally, IUR pays tribute to Janek Kuczkiewicz one of the most outstanding and loved ambassadors of the international trade union movement, who passed away earlier this month.