The Argument Against Aid Conditioned on Respect for Human Rights

In addition to challenging the definition of important rights, these governments and others set out to undermine one of the principal means for enforcing fundamental rights: the often very effective strategy of denying certain forms of international assistance to abusive governments. Economic sanctions were used effectively in 1993, for example, to press for reversal of a coup attempt in Guatemala, to encourage a referendum on multiparty elections in Malawi, and to promote compliance with U.N. recommendations that abusive army officers be dismissed from their positions in El Salvador. Such sanctions ensure that repressive regimes pay a price for their abuse, through restrictions on their access to international assistance. Aid conditions also reflect a growing realization that if the purpose of international assistance is to promote economic rights, respect for civil and political rights must be a central concern.

Human Rights Watch has long supported withholding military aid, police aid, arms transfers and security assistance from governments that consistently commit gross abuses of human rights. These abuses include summary execution, torture, systematic invidious discrimination, and prolonged arbitrary detention. We also oppose certain infrastructure development projects that lend more prestige and legitimacy to an abusive government than direct benefits to the needy. To avoid harming those who suffer poverty and humanitarian disaster, we do not oppose development and relief assistance that meets basic human needs, but urge whenever possible that such aid be channeled through nongovernmental organizations.

Maintaining this linkage between aid and human rights reflects several concerns: the principle that all rights are indivisible, that economic rights cannot be ensured in an environment of disrespect for civil and political rights; the duty of donor nations to avoid becoming complicit in human rights abuse by funding the machinery of repression; and the importance of deterring abuse, by promising an interruption in the flow of material support to those tempted to commit serious human rights violations.

This strategy was attacked by many governments that have felt the sting of economic sanctions. They argue that the victims of abuse should not be deprived of economic assistance simply because of their government's misdeeds. But this logic conveniently confuses the abuser with the abused. Precisely because of concern with the victims of abuse, restrictions on economic assistance seek to deny abusive governments the tools of repression, while preserving as much as possible the flow of assistance to the needy through alternative channels.

In a variation on this argument, the opponents of sanctions attempt to place government-to-government aid in the context of global inequalities of wealth. Any denial of economic assistance, they argue, impedes efforts to establish a more equitable distribution of resources. Yet if a transfer of wealth from North to South, from developed to developing countries, is sought in the name of Southern people rather than Southern oppressors, that will hardly be accomplished by the provision of guns and bullets, or the funds to purchase them, to abusive regimes of the South. The repression underwritten by aid to such governments impedes development and perpetuates inequalities of wealth.

Others argue that linking economic assistance to the human rights record of the recipient amounts to imperialist bullying. But the imperialist label misrepresents the duty to guard against international support of repressive regimes. That duty extends to all governments, whether the support they lend is economic, moral or diplomatic. Nor is the duty extinguished by recasting in nationalist or anti-imperialist rhetoric the tired and discredited argument that human rights are an internal affair, and not the proper concern of the international community.

We recognize that the argument about economic sanctions is advanced not only by self-interested governments but also by others who are concerned that broad embargoes and similar trade sanctions may indiscriminately harm innocent individuals. Human Rights Watch shares these concerns and refrains from advocating general economic embargoes. We also believe that any blockade, or militarily enforced embargo, must comply with international standards against the starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. While we do advocate selected trade sanctions, we attempt to do so in a manner that targets the abuser, not the abused: by seeking, for example, to deny beneficial trade terms to governments that commit or tolerate violations of labor rights, to block export of goods made with forced labor, or torestrict trade benefits to state enterprises of governments that commit gross abuses. We believe that such targeted sanctions enhance the welfare of the victims of abuse, by ensuring that those who violate human rights do not profit from their crimes. We object to governments that deliberately equate the issue of trade sanctions with the goal of preventing international funding of governmental repression. Fine-tuning trade sanctions in the interest of avoiding harm to innocent victims is perfectly appropriate, but there should be no exception to the effort to

avoid financing government abuse.

We also share the concern of many that economic sanctions are often used inconsistently. But the same inconsistency can be found, for example, in such widely accepted tools as U.N. resolutions on human rights. We believe the solution lies not in abandonment of such powerful tools for promoting human rights, but in a quest for more principled application.