THE HAGUE: The top United Nations court ruled on Thursday that the right to strike was protected in a key treaty of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), a decision that could have profound implications for global labour relations.

The International Court of Justice had been asked to deliver a so-called advisory opinion on whether an ILO treaty from 1948, known as Convention 87, implicitly enshrined workers’ right to strike.

ICJ president Yuji Iwasawa said the court was “of the opinion that the right to strike of workers and their organisations is protected” under that convention. However, judges said their opinion, which is not binding, should not be understood as laying out any other ground rules for strike action.

The conclusion “does not entail any determination on the precise content, scope or conditions for the exercise of that right”, said Iwasawa. ILO Convention 87 is an agreement between unions and employers including the right “in full freedom, to organise their administration and activities”.

Unions at the ILO had argued that this by extension enshrined the right to industrial action, but employers disagreed, so they took the fight to the ICJ. Behind the dry legal interpretation of a decades-old treaty lay a heated battle between unions and employer groups at the ILO, which played out in hearings in October 2025.

“This case is about more than legal abstractions,” Harold Koh, representing the International Trade Union Confe­deration, told the judges. “It will affect the real rights of tens of millions of working people around the world,” he added.

Published in Dawn, May 22nd, 2026