Ethical standards in international sales contracts: Can the CISG be used to prevent child labour?

Despite international efforts in recent decades to eliminate it, child labour continues to affect millions of children worldwide. This paper considers whether the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (‘CISG’) can be used to prevent child labour. It firstly addresses the conformity requirements in art 35 of the CISG, and asks whether these can be used to require a seller to deliver child labour-free goods, even where this is not explicitly required by the contract. It then considers whether a buyer can recover damages if the seller delivers goods that are tainted by child labour. It examines the difficulties associated with a claim for damages in this context – especially where the only harm suffered by the buyer is to its goodwill or its ‘performance interest’ – and suggests how such damages might be calculated.