The interpretation of International Labour Organization instruments: international and comparative perspectives.

Summary While the question of interpretation raises many questions, both institutional and substantive, within the International Labour Organization (ILO) itself, the renewed interest in the work of the latter, reflected in particular by a certain number of national court decisions, leads to a situation where the question of the interpretation of its instruments is renewed, made more complex and fragmented by the plurality of actors involved. The objective of this thesis is to examine whether this phenomenon makes it possible to make effective the texts adopted in order to give substance to social justice. In other words, it is a question of asking whether this configuration guarantees the dissemination and preservation of the substance of international labor standards and makes them capable of responding to changing problems. In order to do so, it is necessary to proceed with a successive analysis of the different levels at which they are likely to be used, by looking successively at the international framework and then at the French, Canadian and South African cases. This process makes it possible to highlight the procedural and substantive subtleties specific to each of the frameworks for the implementation of international labour standards and to reveal the interactions that may result in the formation of a system.