Conditionality of aid

The worldwide tendency to link foreign aid with human rights protection has been escalating in spite of the strong opposition to such strings from the governments of the developing countries which make up the majority of aid beneficiaries.

The latest stage in the human rights campaign was initiated by the donor members of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) at its annual meeting in Nice, France, last week. The creditor members, led by the United States government, stipulated what they term "good governance" as one of the 11 conditions for the approval of the 100 percent increase in ADB's capital to US$48 billion.

Similar debates between the governments of developing countries and industrialized countries occurred between March and April, when the U.S. government, with the support of several other advanced countries, strongly demanded that international trade be linked with the protection of labor rights. The demand, which threatened to foil the signing of the new global trade pact in Morocco in the middle of last month, was rejected and the agreements resulting from the 7.5-year-long Uruguay Round of trade negotiations were finally signed by almost all members of GATT.

That human rights have not yet been explicitly stipulated as a condition to international aid does not mean that the international campaign for such linkage will die down. Instead, developing country governments should gear up for a time when such a condition will be imposed officially.

We have observed that the international campaign for human rights protection has been going on for many years under various guises such as workers rights, aid for social welfare and democratization. In fact, good governance could also be seen as part of the overall program to respect human rights. That can be inferred, for example, from the prerequisites which the international community has set for what is termed as good governance: Respect for human rights, democratic rule, fair, efficient and transparent public management, public accountability and clean government.

There are at least two main reasons for the campaign. One is the perception among the international community, notably among the advanced country governments, that the violation of human rights is one of the major threats to international stability and peace in the current post- Cold War era. As recent experiences have shown, human rights violations have caused people to flee their homelands in huge numbers and the poor situation of workers has led to the problem of illegal immigrants with all the negative implications.

The second reason is the fact that economic globalization and communications technology are turning the world into a global village. Hence, the government of a country, whether it is a developing or developed one, tends to be assessed by an internationally-accepted set of yardsticks. Since aid to the developing countries is funded mostly by the taxpayers in the advanced nations, the developed country governments are under increasing pressures from their legislatures, the representatives of the taxpayers, to attach human rights protection as a condition to their overseas aid.

Whether we like or not, we will have to live with the reality that human rights protection in its broadest terms will eventually be stipulated as a condition not only to official aid but also to loans from such multilateral aid or lending agencies as ADB, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, because their lending resources are also financed mostly by the taxpayers in the advanced countries.

Although developing country governments may have legitimate points in their arguments against such a condition, the essence of the campaign for human rights is actually for the good of all mankind in both developing and developed nations. And humans rights are also imperative for a sustainable development process. What is relative with regard to the implementation of the condition is perhaps the stages of the fulfillment of human rights protection in its broadest sense. The implementation may have to be adjusted to the stages of economic development in the various countries.