With the New Zealand development community still reeling from Murray McCully’s mockery of New Zealand Agency for International Development’s (NZAID) poverty alleviation focus, the announce-ment on 1 May has rubbed salt into the wounds of many. For those of you who aren’t aware, the announcement was that NZAID would be reintegrated with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the “lazy” goal of alleviating poverty would be replaced. McCully’s idea—largely based on a combo of discarded development theories—is to make NZAID’s mandate economic growth. From a human rights perspective, the upside of his idea is that it simplifies things by focusing on Pacific peoples’ rights to economic development. All those other ‘human rights’—social, political, civic, and cultural—will just follow along. If only, Murray, if only. Along with all proponents of a purely market-based approach to development, Murray fails to remember that people in the Pacific have a right to development. This wrongs includes protections for their political, civic, economic, social and cultural rights.
The concept of development as a human right was first formulated in the 50s and 60s. It was not until 1986 that it became formally recognised when the UN General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Right to Development. The preamble to this declaration states development is a “comprehensive economic, social, cultural and political process”. It goes on to state that all people should be involved in this process and the benefits should be shared fairly between them. The idea was then adopted by the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, which was ratified by 171 member states in the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights.
The declaration focuses on the role of the international community in helping developing countries realise their right to development. It says “the international community should promote an effective international cooperation for the realisation of the right to development and the elimination of obstacles to development.” It goes on to stress that this will only happen if there are “equitable economic relations and a favourable economic environment at the international level”.
Right to development is not legally binding in itself, it bears legal foundation from the Covent of Political and Civil Rights and the Covent on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights. These are binding Human Rights conventions, considered international law by a number of countries, including New Zealand.
Regarding the right to development, it is important to recognise that there are often external constraints on a government’s ability to protect the rights of its people. This is especially apparent with the restrictions associated with the international economic system. Unfortunately this is largely ignored by developed countries, which (to varying degrees) buy into the structurally adjusted view. Through this understanding, the global economic system is an equal playing field. Developing countries need only follow a few easy steps, and before they know it they will compete on the same par as developed countries and achieve economic growth. Just liberalise trade, privatise state owned enterprises, cut public spending, and deregulate labour and financial markets. The highlight of such notions for us (the developed) is simply that there is no blood on our hands. This way of viewing the world ensures that neither our precious selves, nor our nation, nor our ideologies can be implicated in the poor economic performance and human rights records of developing countries. Supposedly we also gain access to new markets, or so the theory goes. Looks like everybody wins…
Put simply, trade liberalisation requires that countries eliminate barriers to trade (commonly tariffs or subsidies). Trade theory suggests that in the Pacific’s case, they should remove tariffs from imported foods, because food will be cheaper, seemingly benefiting the consumer. Of course, this idea sounds very nice in the isolated wasteland that is theory. When applied in real life and actually interacting with other real-world issues, it gets a little more complicated. So mixed up in fact, that the World Health Organisation has found that when trade liberalisation and food imports have increased in developing countries, diet-related diseases have risen dramatically.
New Zealand is entangled in this. We produce a large quantity of high-fat agricultural waste products very cheaply (mutton flaps, anyone?). No one here eats mutton flaps by choice; instead they are the main ingredient in ‘blood and bone’ fertiliser. The liberalisation of markets in Pacific Island countries gave mutton flaps a whole new role in the world. When countries such as Tonga and Samoa opened their borders they were flooded with mutton flaps. They are cheap: 15–50 percent cheaper than low-fat locally produced meats. Affordability—combined with abundance—acted to severely damage small domestic markets that produced traditional, healthy foods such as taro, fish and organic chicken. This meant the poor often had no choice but to buy them.
The solution to this, and related predicaments, is quite obvious. As the Right to Development suggests, equitable economic relations and a favourable economic environment at the international level are critical if we are going to fulfil Pacific Island peoples’ right to development, and more specifically their right to health. Firstly, this would mean the Tongan government would be able to control the amount of mutton flaps coming into the country. Secondly, they would be better able to promote the development of sustainable indigenous fishing and farming industries, potentially making healthier, traditional foods abundant at a reduced cost.
This solution recognises the importance of developing equitable—not ‘equal’—international relations in order to account for Tonga’s domestic economy, which is underdeveloped relative to New Zealand’s. Taking special measures now would protect and direct development in Tonga as it grows. The current free-trade agreements and organisations that Tonga is party to, such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER), are constricting development by prohibiting these measures.
The rules of the current international system are stopping the Tongan govern-ment from protecting their poorest citizens’ rights to health. When queried about this, Taito Phillip Field, a former New Zealand MP originally from Samoa,, said it was up to the Tongan people to decide what is in their best interests to purchase. Sadly, being selective about food choices is a luxury many cannot afford. The fact remains that it is the poor who have no alternative but to suffer the unavoidable health costs of eating food we New Zealanders consider compost. But hey, who are we to care? New Zealand gained $6 billion when Tonga signed up to the WTO and removed their tariffs.
Many Pacific Island governments are in the process of signing Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with the EU. The EPAs, while still under negotiation, appear to be on a similarly counterproductive path, limiting Pacific Island governments’ abilities to protect health. One of the most problematic issues surrounds the suspected Intellectual Property Rights provisions. Under WTO Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights Provisions (TRIPS), pharmaceutical companies are given a twenty-year monopoly on the production and sale of patented drugs. Essentially, the sale of generic medicines (often 95% cheaper) is illegal in the WTO member countries. Admittedly, TRIPS does contain a provision allowing overriding of this clause in the interest of public health. But employment of this provision in developing countries generally results in threats by developed countries concerning trade and aid sanctions. Worse yet, the EPAs eliminate this loophole condition altogether and promote the rights of pharmaceutical companies over developing countries even more than the World Trade Organisation does.
The formal signing of these agreements will endorse intellectual property rights, preventing the purchase of generic drugs, therefore preventing poorest people in the Pacific from accessing medications. This is especially problematic in countries like Papua New Guinea, which have ever-increasing HIV and AIDS rates. It defies the Right to Development of Pacific people, ignoring the weak economic position many of them hold. They will not be able to afford medicines and the government will be powerless to do anything about it.
These issues have been heavily discussed in the past, but it is important, if not vital, to evaluate them in light of changes to NZAID. Speaking on this issue at the recent MDGs symposium, John Hayes stated, “Only by increasing the wealth of nations will their governments be able to afford and maintain the education, health and other services their people have a right to expect. It’s a virtuous circle.” There is recognition here of the right to health, but it is blatantly a secondary goal to economic development. It is almost as though he thinks health will take care of itself.
Unequitable trade rules will stay the same. McCully talked about the need to align New Zealand’s trade policy more closely with our aid policy. This means that aid will be focused on pulling developing countries into economic relationships that benefit New Zealand. As the mutton flap example showed, the promotion of New Zealand’s trade policy as is currently practised—based on assumption that the global economic system is fair—is not compatible with improved health for people in the Pacific. The poorest people will continue to be stuffed with harmful food. As Taito said earlier, they can decide their own best interests—starvation or sickness? What would you chose? They will then be unable to afford basic drugs to cure said sickness. This will limit their ability to work and develop economically, pushing them further into poverty, which their government will have little control over. Then they will have to select again between sickness and starvation, in this “virtuous circle” of developed self-interest.
To top it off, McCully has also decided that success in aid delivery will now be measured not by vague indicators such as improved living standards, but by trade and tourism statistics. This will act as a convenient mask for declines in not just health but also education, gender equality and a range of other social issues that people in the Pacific have rights to. Give yourself a pat on the back, Murray. Bravo.
What at first appears to be a relatively innocuous memo lifted from the pages of George Orwell’s 1984 is in fact an accurate account of the treatment by US forces of two detainees. Take a journey down into the depths of the Ministry of Truth’s Records Department and fact check history. Change the names of Julia and Winston to Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and Abu Zubaydah. Replace the names Ministry of Love to Joint Task Force Guantánamo, the Ministry of Peace with the Department of Defense and Emmanual Goldstein with Osama bin Laden. When life begins imitating literature in strange and dangerously coincidental ways, we must put the plagiarists on trial.
The 20th Century gave rise to the most brutal of wars, the most efficient and banal bureaucratic war machine history had ever seen. Dark visions of hollowed out countryside littered with flesh and bone. This sight eventually seeped into the words of European authors—their minds grappling with these horrors, they created their own dark dystopias. Along with Orwell’s more traditional totalitarian state, Aldous Huxley and Franz Kafka offered their own bedtime horrors. Huxley’s Brave New World was just as organised as Orwell’s, but the methods were reversed—instead of punishing citizens into submission they materially rewarded good behaviour, instead of torturing thinkcriminals they drugged them into a hospital-grade opiate-like soma daze. The goal was to internalise the values of the state within the individual.
Yet Kafka was the cruelest of them all, withdrawing deep into the human psyche. The Trial stands testament to the golden age of bureaucratic irrationalism—impervious to all forms of communication, especially basic reason. As Josef K. awakes from uneasy dreams he finds himself transformed into a vaguely guilty criminal. He spends the waning days of his life stuck in an endless bureaucratic paper trail, wandering to and fro, from wooden offices of petty administrators through the bleak streets of an estranged hometown. Josef is reduced to nothing more than speck of dust in the bureaucratic machine, stuck in a legal black-hole with no hope of escape.
The Plagiarists
The Bush administration’s sad torturous tale of human rights abuse is no more than a cheap ripoff of books written long ago. If it weren’t for the pathetically human failures of these third-rate Nixonite personalities, the tale would be worthy of literary fame. Instead all we get are third-generation Republican hacks out of their element with fire in their eyes and hell to pay. These are the same people who sat guilty laughing at the impotence of Reaganite era Congressional Hearings. The people are who ran this corrupt brothel were so brazen in their attitudes, so full of hubris, so accustomed to the bubble of Washington power and removed from the reality of their policy—making decisions that perhaps Soviet-style showtrails is the only way to get through to these swineburglars.
Deep inside windowless corner offices the bureaucratic machinery of war courted esteemed academics and retired public figures. Citizens who could be reduced to cheap hackery for the price of a private driver and a blowjob. The administration quickly found a Yakuza to write an eloquent le- gal defence of expansive exec- utive powers and aggressive interrogation techniques. Legal advice was sought, asses were covered and the Department of Ligatation Risk had a successful cocktail party. Even the Pentagon got in on the party; under the direction of Donald Rumsfeld, they schmoozed and charmed public figures. This year’s Pulitzer Prize winner documents the systematic domestic propaganda campaign run by the Pentagon—managing the public perception of the war through a public diplomacy of disinformation.
Eastasia: America’s Friend Enemy
When Ingsoc declared without a hint of irony that Eastasia was and always had been the bitter enemy, it took control of the official narrative of history. Orwell knew that controlling the narrative of history was an indispensable means of legitimising the state’s action. The same principle was at work when Defense Secretary Rumfeld began rattling his saber at Iraq. Forget that this was the same man who shamelessly shook the hand of Saddam Hussien. Forget that this was essentially the same administration that funded Osama bin Laden and the Mujahideen in their fight against communism. Forget that Iraq had no connection to Osama bin Laden and none of the Stepember 11 terrorists were from Afghanistan. A well orchestrated Public Relations campaign and a climate of fear are all that is needed to set the official narrative.
Immediately following the September 11 attacks, the administration was foaming at the mouth and bloodlust set deep in their eyes. Retribution against those responsible was sought and unfinished business in Iraq was back on the agenda. A new chapter in American warfare unlike any other was about to begin, the proverbial gloves would be taken off. This was a new form of warfare against a transnational shadowy enemy who ‘hates our freedoms’. Surely we cannot be expected to engage in lawful or decent combat? For any government, at least superficially acting under legislative constraints, legal defenses and opinions needed to be drafted justifying its actions, no matter how disingenuous they may be. And so Bush Administration lawyers went into overdrive, writing memos and legal opinions justifying the new ‘gloves off’ tactics that administration officials demanded. Lawyers at the Department of Defense and Department of Justice argued two essential points: terrorists captured would be legal non-entities and aggressive interrogation techniques were within the legal limits set by domestic and international laws.
The War on Semantics
George W. Bush’s War on Grammar was comical enough for the rest of the world, yet behind those slightly dopey eyes a much more insidious war was being waged. The Bush Administration waged a War on Semantics, and the question of torture became an academic exercise. The Bush presidency gave us a lot; lower taxes, higher deficits, Hurricane Katrina, and comical moments at podium. But its greatest gift of all was bestowed upon the English language: two phrases worthy of official entry into Orwell’s 11th edition of Newspeak—Unlawful Enemy Combatants and Enhanced Interrogation Techniques. Great legal and policy minds set to work interpreting the definition of torture, attempting to open up a space in which the US forces could interrogate detainees in officially unprecedented ways. Including physical as well as psychological techniques. Physical techniques aren’t particularly useful, as sheer brute force isn’t greatly effective in breaking down a prisoner and often strengthens their resolve—plus it invariable leaves bruising as proof. No, what the US specialises in is pshycological interrogation, sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, sexual humiliation, and the use of phobias against prisoners. The Justice Department wrote what is now the infamous ‘Torture Memo’, which argues that so long as each individual technique caused no lasting damage it was legal, and vaguely argues that the accumulative effect of these techniques would not cross the threshold of torture.
Orwell believed controlling the past was essential to controlling the present. He also knew that controlling language was just as important—language defines limits.
The substance of the term ‘Unlawful Enemy Combatants’ evolved from a Justice Department opinion submitted to the President in Jan. 2002. Under the Gevena Conventions, all prisoners of war are granted rights, including the right to a fair trail and a right to be treated humanely. All signatory states of the Gevena Conventions must abide by these rules of war. This included the treatment of prisoners bearing the uniform or insignia of another state (and if that state is not a signatory to the convention or the prisioner is not uniformed then the less stringent Common Article 3 will apply, although this still bans the use of torture). The Justice Department argued that al-Queda would not be covered by the Geneva Conventions because they are not soldiers of any particular country. The motley militias of the Taliban bore no insignia so only the minimum Common Article 3 applied. The Justice Department then argued that this proviso only applied to civil wars, concluding that the Gevena Convention did not apply. By exploiting the loopholes which existed in a treaty founded in a state-centric age, the Bush administration disingenuously interpreted their obligations under the law for their own ends. The US Supreme Court eventually brought the US into line with international obligations in its 2006 decision, ruling that detainees were guaranteed the minimum protection of Common Article 3. The Bush administration also needed to insulate itself from its own domestic obligations. It needed to shield the detainees from the reach of US courts. The administration argued that because these detainees were stationed outside of US territory (i.e. on ‘leased’ terrority in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba), the courts had no jurisdiction. This argument is absurdly flimsy—consider the following: My flatmate kidnaps my milk in the middle of the night and transports it to his rented apartment on Cuba St. I still have a right to my flatwhite. The Supreme Court concurred in 2008, ruling that all detainees had access to the U.S. legal system and could not be held indefinitely without charges laid against them. Within the last two weeks a federal US judge ruled that detainees held in Afghanistan had the right to a trail in US courts.
Baghram Airbase in Afghanistan was the Bush administration’s first attempt at running a large-scale detention facility in a combat zone. Within the first years of its operation, four detainees were beaten to death and numerous more were subject to what human rights groups call ‘systematic abuse’. One of those deceased detainees is the subject of the documentary Taxi to the Dark Side. The worst excesses of Baghram Airbase evolved and ripened into the third-rate B-grade bondage film that was Abu Graib. Once the Iraq war was underway military and policy leaders made no attempt at changing offical policy in light of prisoner abuse at Baghram Airbase. This tacit approval, along with a strong insistence on breaking down prisoners, created what has been called a ‘forced drift’ of ever-worsening abuses, culminating in what is surely tantamont to torture. Yet policy-makers hoped that this plausible deniability of abuse, along with legal memos legitimising interrogation tactics, would be enough to cover themselves legally. Yet the administration’s official narrative of the Abu Graib scandal was that prisoner abuse was the product of a “few bad apples” and not administration policy. This view is simply not tenable and we must view the investigation for what it really was—a show trail for those at the bottom of the food chain, while those at the top scrambled to cover their asses.
Means to an End?
In a strictly ethical sense, the debate surrounding the use of these enhanced interrogation techniques can be divided into two distinct camps: the Utilitarian and the Kantian. Under Utilitarian ethics an action is permissible if it maximises the welfare of society, so killing may be a permissible means to the end. Granted, this is a relatively crude formulation of Utilitarian, it is usually qualified with some rules and conditions, such as actions are permissibly ethical if and only if they operate within some boundaries set by society. Recent polling data shows that anywhere between 60 and 70 percent of Americans believe the Enhanced Interrogation Techniques were torture and some 40 percent believe torture is never justifiied. Kantian ethics state first and foremost that all human beings must be treated as ends in themselves and not as a means toward a National Security end.
There are other reasons why we may think these interrogation methods are impermissible—from past historical precedents and ethical consistency, a question as to its effectiveness, and a simple belief in the constraint of executive power. The US has been involved in two major war tribunals, the Nuremberg Trials and the Toyko Trials. Immediately following the defeat of the Japan in 1945, the US tried Japanese soldiers, finding them guilty of torture—acts including waterboarding. Some of these soldiers were sentenced to death and others to hard labour. If we believe in ethical consistency, then as a society we should demand those who authorised the use of these techniques to be tried. The second argument, and one the media have almost wholly focused on, is the effectiveness of these interrogation techniques. It is argued that the information obtained could have been attained through other, less severe, methods. One also has to wonder the credibility of evidence obtained under harsh interrogation. Furthermore, the existence of these detention facilities and the revelation of prisoner abuse only serves as a recuitment tool for those aggrieved against the US. The third argument is that the Executive Branch must operate within the parameters set by Congress and international treaties. If these interrogation methods are deemed as either cruel and unusual or torture, then the administration would be operating outside the law.
Where the Bush administration failed in respecting the law and basic integrity, let us hope that Obama will appoint men and women of honour in the Justice and State Departments, the Pentagon and CIA. Otherwise tattered posters of hope will lie in the streets.