China’s parliament has ratified two ILO conventions against forced labour.
(dpa)
After much hesitation, China’s parliament has ratified two conventions of the International Labor Organization (ILO) against forced labour. The Standing Committee of the People’s Congress voted in Beijing to approve the 1930 Forced and Compulsory Labor Conventions and abolish them in 1957, the parliament reported on its website on Thursday.
Although China is a member of the UN organization, it has not yet ratified either convention. In recent years, China has increasingly faced allegations of forced labor by members of the Uyghur Muslim minority in Xinjiang, northwest China. The United Nations Labor Organization expressed its “deep concern” about the allegations in February.
Ratification has also been a contentious issue in the negotiations for the China-EU Investment Agreement because of Beijing’s vague commitment to further efforts towards parliamentary approval. Since the imposition of Chinese sanctions in March 2021 against members of parliament and EU bodies in the dispute over action against the Uyghurs, the agreement has been on hold anyway.