Ethiopian Review

Human rights have long been a concern.
Recent years have seen increasing acknowledgment that human rights and economic issues such as development go hand in hand.
The Amnesty International Report 2009 highlights the impact of the economic crisis on human rights across the world, calling for a new deal on human rights to go hand-in-hand with any proposed financial solutions.
Long before the global financial crisis took hold, human rights concerns were high the world over, as annual reports from Amnesty International and other human rights organisations repeatedly warned about.
The global financial crisis has led to an economic crisis which in turn has led to a human rights crisis, says Amnesty in their 2009 report.
They find that as millions more slide into poverty as a result of the current crisis, social unrest increases resulting in more protests. These protests are sometimes met with a lot of suppression. Other times, people are exploited further.
The World Bank agrees. According to the BBC, the World Bank has warned of a “human catastrophe” in the world’s poorest countries unless more is done to tackle the global economic crisis. It fears massive social upheaval if more is not done to address the crisis.
When the G20 held a summit in UK in April 2009, much was made by local media about the apparent use of excessive force by police against protesters, which even led to the death of a passer by mistaken as a protester – a small minority of whom were also violent. George Monbiot from the Guardian newspaper also raises concerns about how campaigners and protesters are being rebranding as “domestic extremists”.
But as a news article accompanying the report from Amnesty summarises, many nations have seen protests against economic decline and social conditions that have been met by violence, arrests and detentions without charge. Across Africa, people demonstrated against desperate social and economic situations and sharp rises in living costs. Some demonstrations turned violent; the authorities often repressed protests with excessive force.
Social tensions and economic disparities led to thousands of protests throughout China. In the Americas, social protest at economic conditions increased in Peru; in Chile there were demonstrations throughout 2008 on indigenous people’s rights and rising living costs.
In the Middle East and North Africa, the economic and social insecurity was highlighted by strikes and protests in several countries, including Egypt. In Tunisia, strikes and protests were put down with force, causing two deaths, many injuries and more than 2,000 prosecutions of alleged organisers, some culminating in long prison sentences.
The poorer countries do get foreign aid from richer nations, but it cannot be expected that current levels of aid – low as they actually are – can be maintained, as donor nations themselves go through financial crisis.
As such, the Millennium Development Goals that address many concerns, such as halving poverty and hunger around the world, will be affected.
Although almost an aside, the issue of tax havens is important for many poor countries. Tax havens result in capital moving out of poor countries into havens. An important source of revenue, domestic tax revenues account for just 13 per cent of low income countries’ earnings, whereas it is 36 per cent for the rich countries, as Inter Press Service notes. But this capital flight is estimated to cost poor countries from 350 billion dollars to 500 billion dollars in lost revenues, outweighing foreign aid by almost a factor of five.
This lost tax revenue is significant for poor countries. It could reduce, or eliminate, the need for foreign aid that many in rich countries do not like giving anyway; it could help poor countries pay off (legitimate) debts; and also help themselves become more independent from the influence of wealthy creditor nations.
Politically, it may be this latter point that prevents many rich countries doing more to help the poor, when monetarily it would be so easy to do so.
Crippling third world debt has been hampering development of the developing countries for decades. These debts are small in comparison to the bailout the US alone was prepared to give its banks, but enormous for the poor countries that bear those burdens, having affected many millions of lives for many, many years.
Many of these debts were incurred not only just by irresponsible government borrowers, such as corrupt third world dictators, many of whom had come to power with Western backing and support, but also irresponsible lending – also a moral hazard from Western banks and institutions they heavily influenced, such as the IMF and World Bank.
Despite enormous protest and public pressure for odious debt relief or write-offs, hardly any has occurred, and when it does grand promises of debt relief for poor countries often turn out to be exaggerated. One recently described “historic breakthrough” debt relief was announced as a 40 billion dollars debt write-off, but turned out to be closer to 17 billion dollars in real terms. To achieve even this amount required much campaigning and pressurising of the mainstream media to cover these issues.
By contrast, the 700 billion dollar bail out, as well as bailouts by other rich governments, were very quick to put in place. The money then seemed easy to find. Talk of increasing health or education budgets in rich countries typically meets resistance. Massive military spending, or now, financial sector bail out, however, can be done extremely quickly.
And, a common view in many countries seems to be how financial sector leaders “get away” with it. For example, a hungry person stealing bread is likely to get thrown into jail. A financial sector leader, or an ideologue pushing for policies that are going to lead to corruption or weaknesses like this, face almost no such consequence for their action other than resigning from their jobs and perhaps public humiliation for a while

(Capital)