House of Lords debates
Thursday, 5 March 2009
Africa: Governance and Law — Debate
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3:24 pm
Lord Malloch-Brown (Minister of State, Foreign & Commonwealth Office; Labour) Hansard source
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, for raising this subject. His views were wide-ranging and erudite, as always, and he showed tremendous judgment in all that he touched on. He described this informally as the Obama debate, since it took America to elect a Luo President when Kenya seemed quite unable to do so. I was clearly not the first to ask Raila Odinga, a Luo, "What is it about Kenya that America elects a Luo President first?", as he quickly responded, "No, no, no—Kenya was the first to elect a Luo President; America was the first to seat one". Many would recognise the accuracy of his complaint.
I want to echo the point made about the Mo Ibrahim index, which shows that the quality of governance in Africa, the prevalence of civil wars and the rates of economic growth by country are, indeed, all going in the right way. There is more democracy, less war and rather more growth in recent years than there has been for a long time. Nearly everyone in our debate is an Afro-enthusiast and an Afro-optimist. Nevertheless, listening to this debate, we have heard a series of problems raised that indicate just how far we feel that our friends in Africa have to go in the quality of governance and rule of law on that continent.
For a long time, I have felt that we have, perhaps, been at fault in the amount of money that we put into democracy and elections in Africa. It has reduced good governance to having an election every four or five years. In doing so, we have unintentionally created elected dictatorships, where presidents win at the ballot—they often get re-elected time after time there—and can point to an election that has met reasonable rules of competition, and where there has been support for the contest from ourselves and from others. Yet, as soon as the election is over, the Opposition are, too frequently, locked up again or barred from meaningful participation in the political process.
Minority rights are continuously trampled on or overlooked. All too frequently, there is no robust or free media—perhaps the most significant way available to curb corruption, by exposing it when it is found. Instead, too often the solution to corruption seems to borrow from Western notions rather than more indigenous ones, perhaps. Kenya was raised: an example of a country where, I think I am right in saying, MPs are paid more than MPs here, because of a misplaced notion—borrowed, I suspect, from the Singapore experience—that if you pay public servants well, they will not steal. Well, in Kenya they are paid well and they still steal, so it becomes enormously important to approach corruption through something broader than one poorly borrowed notion from elsewhere.
The noble Baroness, Lady Rawlings, has just referred to commodities and the great wealth in them that Africa enjoys, yet the very presence of those commodities has contributed so much to the corruption. The fight to control the diamonds, the oil, the gold and even, at times, the cocoa has led to so much of the continent's bad governance and corruption. Many wiser African leaders have almost cursed that natural wealth, because it has frequently appeared to inhibit and impede good government. The exceptions are few: for example, in Botswana, which was mentioned, diamonds have contributed to a broad-based development and growing incomes. Yet take a similar presence of diamonds in west Africa, and one sees that they have, until recently, only contributed to a history of bad governance in, say, Sierra Leone or Liberia. The fight to build governance must take account of the nature of the African economy and the nature of African societies, and encourage Africa to find solutions. As so many noble Lords said in the debate today, so many Africans want solutions. Perhaps the most encouraging thing of all is the growth of a civil society which deliberately places itself outside parliamentary politics, because it feels in too many cases in Africa that those are corrupt politics, and instead presses for transparency. It presses against corruption and for accountability of both Parliaments and the Executives. It is a very encouraging development.
I have always felt that the case for democratic governance in Africa cannot and must not be separated from the case for reducing and fighting poverty in the continent. The two must be linked; it must be the case that by giving people the vote one is giving poor people the means to hold government to account, to demand from government the basic services of education and healthcare, as well as the basic opportunities of jobs and employment and a decent living for themselves and their families. In too many places, poverty and the accountability for growth has become completely separated from Parliaments and Governments. The two need reconnecting, so that democracy is not a way for elites to renew their power every four or five years and renew their corrupt access to government resources. Instead, democracy must be a means for the poor to demand a better share of their countries' resources and demand that their rights are met. That retooling of democracy to that second objective underlies everything that we would want to see done in this area.
Mention was made of NePAD, which is the economic vehicle that Africa has established for poverty reduction. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister has invited the current chair of NePAD, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, to come to the G20, accompanied by Jean Ping of the African Union precisely to ensure that, at that G20 meeting, the views of Africa and the poorer parts of Africa are fully reflected and we use the G20 as a vehicle to ensure that an action plan for Africa at this time of global economic crisis is a part of the conclusions of the London summit.
Before turning to the different country situations, let me say that we understand that to establish good governance and the rule of law in Africa needs actions at different levels—the individual level, the state level, the regional level and the global level. I have in a sense spoken about the individual level; we need to see Africans empowered, men and women alike, to be able to demand their rights and to demand access to the limited economic resources of their country. DfID has many programmes, some of which have been commented on today, to strengthen states, their human rights machinery, their legal framework and there parliaments. That is usefully supported by the regional level, where we are working with the African Union to try to support its institutions, some of them new and exciting—from the Pan-African Parliament to its own human rights institutions, as well as a strengthened African Union Commission, with commissioners dealing with many of the areas that touch on today's debates. Beyond that is the role of the international community, of which we are part, to keep pressure on Africa through our aid partnerships and our diplomatic efforts, to continue moving forward as Africans themselves wish towards an era of better governance.
I turn to the many countries' situations that were raised in today's debate and which, in their different ways, are manifest expressions of the challenges that governance still faces in the continent. The noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, and others mentioned Zimbabwe and the call from the new Government for $2 billion of resources to meet the immediate needs of economic stabilisation. Although the noble Lord, Lord St John of Bletso, one of the House's most well-informed observers of Africa, said that he can see "green shoots of recovery", I imagine that, in using that phrase—which is currently somewhat controversial in Britain—he implied a degree of scepticism on his own part about how real such recovery yet was. Therefore, he will not, perhaps, be surprised if I say that we will need to see those shoots grow a little more before we are willing to engage in any broad-based economic support for the Government.
We have set very clear tests, including the release of political prisoners; the end of violence; a timetable towards elections; and, perhaps most relevant, a serious economic plan run by honest men. While Gideon Gono remains governor of the central bank of Zimbabwe, there is no confidence on these Benches—or, I suspect, anywhere in the House—that any money handed over would be properly and honestly used. We will continue to support the humanitarian needs of the country as generously as we can. Reference was made to cholera victims growing in number. Here, we are not only providing medical supplies, but supporting the salaries of health workers to make sure that the healthcare system does not collapse.
I turn to Zimbabwe's neighbour, Malawi. As the noble Lord, Lord Steel, says, elections are imminent. It is most unfortunate that one of the candidates—a man well known to the noble Lord, Lord Steel, and myself—has been arrested this week. I have intervened several times with both the current President and his predecessor about the need to make sure that the intense political dispute between the two sides in Malawi does not undermine the multi-party democracy that has been so preciously recovered there. We will be very engaged during the election period.
On Somalia, the fight against piracy is certainly critical. As noble Lords know, we are very much involved in the piracy taskforce; its command centre is here in the UK. Beyond that, we are engaged onshore in Somalia, in the work to stabilise the political situation. There is important progress at the moment and we have been encouraging that with a new President, who has now succeeded in forming a broad-based Government, who have returned to Mogadishu. While there have been ups and downs in security, the basic trend towards a more inclusive politics in Somalia seems to be on course as an outcome of the Djibouti process.
We have had contact with the President of Somaliland, and the Foreign Secretary will meet him. Our position remains the same: first and foremost, the leaders of Somalia and Somaliland must sit down to try to resolve their differences. Beyond that, it is for Africa to take the lead in any change of status that might follow. We certainly cannot overlook the fact that Somaliland is the one part of broader Somalia where there is, at the moment, some reasonable government and development progress. Indeed, some 60 per cent of our development assistance is applied to Somaliland because of the success that is possible there.
I turn to Sudan, Darfur and the ICC, where we welcomed yesterday's decision by the judges of the court to proceed with an indictment. We welcomed it solely on the grounds that we respect the independence of the court and its power to hold people everywhere to account for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The court was established to end the impunities that had allowed these mass human rights crimes in the past to go unpunished. Therefore, we are absolutely committed to that independent judicial process. That does not make us calm about the likely political consequences of this in Darfur and the broader region and we will stay acutely focused on them. The fact that aid workers of non-governmental aid agencies over the past 24 hours have been asked to end their operations in Darfur is a matter of great concern. We hope that that situation will be resolved.
I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, that we announced in 2007 a £70 million, 10-year programme for Uganda. DfID also announced a contribution of £15 million over five years to UN programmes aimed at improving gender equality. Uganda is one of those countries where girls, I am pleased to say, are as likely as boys to enrol in primary school. Participation rates of six to 12 year-olds have risen to 84 per cent from 62 per cent in 1992. A lot of that is as a result of debt relief, which has freed more funds.
I acknowledge that the countries of West Africa have become entrepôts and points en route for the global drugs trade. The Colombian presence in Guinea-Bissau, Guinea and other small countries of West Africa is a desperately serious development and is undermining the governance of those countries. That is reflected in the deaths of the President and the Chief of Defence Staff in Guinea-Bissau in recent days.
I shall hide, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Rawlings, behind the absence of time rather than get into the relationship between the Foreign Office and DfID. Similarly, I fear that I will not be able to address the issue of police and other conflict resources in Europe. I will also plead that that is perhaps a little outside the scope of today's debate. The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, knows that I am extremely concerned to make sure that our discretionary conflict funds remain as strong as ever. While inevitably these economic times require cuts across many areas of government, it would be an absolute anathema to those of us committed to poverty reduction and development if our contribution to the security sector, which is key to stability in so many countries, was inappropriately cut.
I close with a word on the responsibility to protect. Although it is a controversial concept in Africa and things such as the ICC indictment only increase the suspicion of it among many African and other Governments, nevertheless we press ahead because it is an absolutely indispensable concept in today's world. In that sense, the UN report prepared by the Special Adviser to the UN Secretary-General and published recently in New York stresses, we think sensibly, that the responsibility to protect is not just about military intervention: it is more about upstream interventions intended to pre-empt conflict before it occurs—such as Kofi Annan's mediation in Kenya before the situation there turned to wider violence.
Noble Lords will forgive me because I have not done justice to many issues raised, but the time is up and, as with Africa, we will no doubt return to this again
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