Labour Rights as Human Rights: Advancing the Positivists’ Argument

Abstract The question whether labour rights are human rights has provoked a lot of debate among scholars. Surveying the literature, three different approaches are identified namely, Instrumental Approach, Normative Approach and Positive Approach. These approaches are outlined to navigate the discussion herein. The paper supports, explores and develops the Positive Approach with reference to the principle of ‘indivisibility of rights. It used Amartya Sen’s view on indivisibility of rights as a framework and argues that some human rights instruments not only contain labour rights, but also propagate the indivisibility of rights. If rights are indivisible as expressed in such human rights treaties, then labour rights can be enforced as human rights. Regarding the indivisibility of rights, the African (Banjul) Charter is used to project the argument and to set the limit of the paper.