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A safeguard, in international law, is a restraint on international trade or economic development to protect communities from development aggression or home industries from foreign competition. In the World Trade Organization (WTO), a member may take a safeguard action, such as restricting imports of a product temporarily to protect a domestic industry from an increase in imports causing or threatening to cause injury to domestic production. In the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, safeguards are intended to protect indigenous peoples and other
local communities A local community has been defined as a group of interacting people living in a common location. The word is often used to refer to a group that is organized around common values and is attributed with social cohesion within a shared geographical l ...
with traditional knowledge of natural resource management within efforts towards
reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation Reduction, reduced, or reduce may refer to: Science and technology Chemistry * Reduction (chemistry), part of a reduction-oxidation (redox) reaction in which atoms have their oxidation state changed. ** Organic redox reaction, a redox reacti ...
. The WTO and UNFCCC concepts are related within international law.


Background

With UNFCC processes, safeguards became of concern in the
2010 United Nations Climate Change Conference The 2010 United Nations Climate Change Conference was held in Cancún, Mexico, from 29 November to 10 December 2010. The conference is officially referred to as the 16th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework ...
. Within the WTO, safeguard measures were available under the
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) is a legal agreement between many countries, whose overall purpose was to promote international trade by reducing or eliminating trade barriers such as tariffs or quotas. According to its pre ...
(GATT) (Article XIX). However, they were infrequently used, and some governments preferred to protect their industries by "grey area" measures ("voluntary" export restraint arrangements on products such as cars, steel and semiconductors). As part of the WTO deal, members gave up the "grey area" measures and adopted a specific WTO Safeguards Agreemen

to discipline the use of safeguard measures. Safeguards are usually seen as responses to economic development and trade processes that align with international law, as opposed to negative practices, such as dumping (pricing policy), dumping or subsidies. In the context of world trade, they are supposed to be used only in very specific circumstances, with compensation, and on a universal basis. For example, a member restricting imports for safeguard purposes would have to restrict imports from all other countries. However, exceptions to the nondiscriminatory rule are provided for in the Agreement on Safeguards itself as well as in some ad hoc agreements. In the last respect, it is worthwhile to note that the People's Republic of China accepted that discriminatory safeguards may be imposed on its exports to other WTO members until 2013.


Examples

Some safeguard measures can be resorted to in the area of services, as provided for in the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). Regional trading arrangements have their own rules relating to safeguards. One example of a safeguard being used successfully was when Liechtenstein used a safeguard measure in the EEA Agreement with the European Union to limit immigration from the EU until a more permanent agreement was put in place to limit immigration.
Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol Article often refers to: * Article (grammar), a grammatical element used to indicate definiteness or indefiniteness * Article (publishing), a piece of nonfictional prose that is an independent part of a publication Article may also refer to: G ...
is a more wide ranging safeguard measure affecting the relationship of Northern Ireland, the United Kingdom and the European Union after Brexit.


See also

* World Trade Organization (WTO) * United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) * IAEA safeguards (Supporting the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons)


References

{{reflist * Yong-Shik Lee (2014), ''Safeguard Measures in World Trade: The Legal Analysis''
Edward Elgar
* Edwin Vermulst and Folkert Graafsma (2002), WTO Disputes Anti-Dumping, Subsidies and Safeguards, Cameron May * Fabio Spadi (2002), "Discriminatory Safeguards in the Light of the Admission of the People's Republic of China to the World Trade Organization", ''Journal of International Economic Law'' 2002 5(2), 421-443
Paolo Farah
(2006
Five Years of China’s WTO Membership. EU and US Perspectives about China’s Compliance with Transparency Commitments and the Transitional Review Mechanism
''Legal Issues of Economic Integration'', Kluwer Law International, Volume 33, Number 3, pp. 263–304.


External links



International trade law