Deadly
Aid
How
U.S. foreign assistance is helping human rights violators -- and how to stop
it.
BY
MARIA MCFARLAND SANCHEZ-MORENO, NAOMI ROHT-ARRIAZA | AUGUST 6, 2012
Maria
McFarland Sanchez-Moreno is acting U.S. program director at Human Rights Watch.
Naomi
Roht-Arriaza is professor of law at the University of California Hastings
College of the Law.
one anecdote (one real case – other similar cases –
general account on the US’s failure to integrate human rights concerns into
foreign aid)
When
Colombian paramilitary leader Carlos Mario Jimenez, known as
"Macaco," tried to reduce his expected prison time in 2008 by turning
over his ill-gotten gains to prosecutors, he included on his property list the
assets of a major palm oil cooperative. The revelation came as little surprise:
The drug-running militias had famously displaced thousands of small farmers
across the country through years of massacres, killings, torture and threats,
and there had long been rumors that their proxies were developing palm oil
projects on the stolen land. Now it was clear that the suspicions were correct.
What
came as a shock, though, was that the specific palm oil projects Macaco was
delivering had received funds from the U.S. Agency for International
Development (USAID) as part of an "alternative livelihoods" strategy
meant to wean farmers off growing coca leaf. The U.S. agency, however, had
neglected to look beyond the formal list of members of the cooperative to see
the violence and human rights violations associated with the projects. USAID
had halted similar projects with another company around the same time after
U.S.-based groups raised concerns over its alleged paramilitary ties, and
claimed to have instituted better procedures to screen land projects. But its
failure to adequately implement them in the Macaco case reinforced concerns
that the United States seemed willing to turn a blind eye to rights abuses.
This
damaging episode is not merely an isolated example, but the
result of U.S. aid agencies' weak human rights safeguards. President Barack
Obama, who laid out "a new comprehensive strategy to prevent and respond
to mass atrocities" in a speech at the Holocaust Museum in April, is
well aware of the need for the United States to respond to the worst crimes on
the planet. But the White House risks missing the bigger picture if it does not
address human rights abuses and repression more broadly.
Amount
For
decades, the human rights community has raised concerns about military support
directed at abusive security forces, but it has paid relatively little
attention to softer forms of assistance. This aid, however -- which is provided
largely through USAID and the State Department, adding up to
approximately $47 billion in 2011 -- can also play a significant role in
either abetting or addressing human rights violations.
USAID’s belated response is nowhere near sufficient
Fortunately,
USAID is starting to recognize the importance of integrating human rights more
thoroughly into its work, and has begun to revamp its procedures to achieve
this goal. It has strengthened human rights programming and begun
to integrate concerns about rights into areas like health and gender rights. But
success will require the agency to address a number of areas where its work has
failed to meet basic human rights standards, or even worse, supported
repression.
Aiding
Repression and Abuse
Not a simple problem (no effective way to integrate human
rights concerns into aid programming)
Providing
U.S. assistance to countries where booming economic growth is
coupled with severe repression -- for instance, Ethiopia, Rwanda, and
Uganda -- presents a particularly difficult challenge. In Ethiopia, human rights groups have
reported in great detail how the leadership in Addis Ababa has become increasingly
authoritarian over the past few years. Since 2003, Human Rights Watch
(HRW) has documented crimes against humanity and war
crimes by Ethiopia's security forces in response to armed insurgencies, both
within its own territory and in neighboring Somalia. And following the
introduction of two repressive pieces of legislation in 2009,
the vast majority of Ethiopia's independent voices -- including journalists,
human rights activists, and opposition party supporters -- have either fled the
country or been jailed on trumped-up charges.
In
2010, the ruling party won 99.6 percent of parliamentary seats after a national
campaign of threats and coercion. During the campaign, HRW found that the government was using
development and food aid, partially funded by the United States, as a
tool for repression --conditioning access to essential government
programs, funded through foreign assistance, on support for the ruling party.
Yet
even as repression has worsened, development aid has increasingly flowed to
Ethiopia. USAID spent almost $740 million on aid to Ethiopia in 2010, the
latest year for which solid numbers are publicly available, compared with $588
million in 2005.
This
is not a simple issue. Ethiopia is one of Africa's largest and
poorest countries, and donors understandably want to help provide a safety
net for its most vulnerable citizens. Unlike in countries where donors can
support non-governmental activity in lieu of funding a repressive state, in
Ethiopia the government has constricted that opportunity through a
repressive law that limits the ability of civil society groups working
on any human rights or advocacy issues to receive foreign funds. But ignoring
the reality that aid to a closed regime means bolstering the power of the
ruling party -- and failing to monitor the social effects of U.S. aid programs
appropriately -- is no solution.
Out of lack of concern for human rights standards
In
other cases, USAID has supported abusive government
programs out of lack of concern for human rights standards or simply
lack of vigilance. For example, in
Vietnam, HRW recently
documented how people detained by the police for using drugs are
held without due process for four to five years. They are subject to a
government policy of "therapeutic labor" for up to 12 hours a day,
six days a week. Those who refuse to work, or who infringe on the institution's
rules, are tortured and subjected to other forms of ill treatment. These
centers "are little more than forced labor camps where tens of thousands
of people work against their will six days a week processing cashews, sewing
garments, or manufacturing other items," HRW wrote upon the publication of
its investigation.
The
United States has funded a number of programs in these centers -- including
workshops and training for government "addiction counselors," who are
often Ministry of Labor staff that operate as little more than guards. USAID,
on its own and as an implementer for the U.S. health aid program PEPFAR, has
provided much of this support through its partners -- mostly American NGOs, but
also Vietnamese government authorities. In one case, PEPFAR actually listed a
drug detention center as its implementing partner. While funding activities in
the centers, USAID and PEPFAR have had limited access to the centers or
ability to speak privately to detainees. Consequently, they and their partners
have reported back only on indicators related to their narrow programming
goals, while stating that they have seen no evidence of abuse.
Too aligned with a repressive government’s priorities
Another
problem arises when U.S. assistance becomes too
closely aligned with a repressive government's priorities and is interpreted as
political support for the regime. This is particularly difficult when dealing
with countries that restrict the types of support foreign donors can
provide. In Egypt, for
example, USAID's willingness to comply with President Hosni Mubarak's funding
restrictions while he was in power led to criticism from many civil society
organizations at the time. What's more, this compliance harmed the credibility
of USAID's protests after Egypt's military-led government harassed and
intimidated American NGOs last year -- the Cairo authorities could simply say
they were merely enforcing their own laws, by which the United States had
previously abided.
To solve or address these problems, the U.S. (as a whole or nation) should
use its own leverage or spend political capital
Although
the United States may not wish to violate local law, it can use its own
leverage, and work with other donors, to insist that minimal standards are met
so that civil society groups can function freely, or at least spend political
capital to publicly oppose the restrictions. For example, a more public,
unified, and insistent diplomatic response to Ethiopia's current draconian
restrictions on civil society and the media might have more impact than quiet
diplomacy, which is getting nowhere. For the United States to use its leverage
though, human rights concerns have to be bumped up the list of diplomatic
priorities. USAID also has to be willing to drop or find alternatives to
non-essential programs in countries where programming is more likely to further
repression than provide any real support to vulnerable populations.
A
Solution: Screens and Safeguards
Despite
an extensive process for planning, monitoring, and evaluating projects, USAID
has no systematic way of considering unanticipated or undesirable human
rights-related side effects of its programming. Essentially, it sets goals
and then establishes indicators for meeting them -- but it does not monitor for
unintended consequences of its actions. That should be fixed: USAID should
consistently screen potential projects to reduce the likelihood that
they will contribute to political repression, discrimination, dispossession, or
widespread arbitrary deprivations of economic and social rights.
The
agency should also put procedures in place to help it understand the
underlying risks of its projects. This would include taking into account
reliable information on human rights conditions, such as State Department human
rights reports and reporting by local and international human rights
organizations. Should USAID find that a project might have negative human
rights implications, the project should be modified or, if need be, abandoned.
This will require its staff to be trained in rights-based approaches and
analysis, not just technical fixes -- and to be rewarded for applying the
training.
USAID
already has safeguards (currently) in place. For example, all
projects are supposed to account for their impacts on
gender dynamics and women's empowerment. Under U.S. law, all projects must also
consider environmental impacts and, if necessary, show that any negative
impacts will be mitigated.
Safeguards
scrapped, but need to be re-introduced
But
that's where the safeguards end. A formerly
mandatory policy requiring USAID to analyze a project's social
impact during the planning phase was made optional and effectively
discontinued in the early 2000s; it was dismissed as time-consuming and
unwieldy, and nothing has replaced it. A position for an indigenous peoples'
coordinator at USAID was also scrapped. Today, no specific mechanisms exist
to prevent harm to indigenous people or forcible displacement of local groups
in conjunction with economic, agricultural, mining, or infrastructure programs.
Experience
shows that skimping on time and effort up front results in failed projects,
political controversy, and a loss of trust from local communities and groups.
Obama's renewed commitment to preventing and responding to atrocities -- and
the steps toward reform at USAID -- are welcome moves. But to have a real
impact, the Obama administration must reexamine deeply entrenched
policies surrounding how the United States distributes foreign
assistance. Congress could
assist by changing funding patterns that encourage separate "silos,"
where agricultural or health specialists are on different budget cycles, rather
than rights-integrated programming. It could also lengthen short funding cycles
for USAID, which make due diligence and public participation more difficult.
USAID
has taken the first steps toward implementing the president's initiative. But
if it fails to go far enough -- if it continues to provide support to
repressive regimes, ignores human rights issues in favor of other policy
priorities, and fails to seriously incorporate human rights concerns in its
work -- the administration's strong words about supporting rights and
preventing atrocities will be just that: words. It's time for USAID to take
bold steps, and make sure its aid programs are used to prevent atrocities, not
to promote them.
