EU-AU conference betrays the people of Zimbabwe

Portugal should honour its human rights commitments by arresting Mugabe

Mugabe does not have immunity from prosecution for crimes such as torture

London – 7 December 2007

"The Portuguese government should instruct its police to arrest President Mugabe on charges of torture when he arrives in Lisbon this weekend for the EU-African Union summit," urged human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell.

"To allow Mugabe to attend the summit unimpeded would be a tragic betrayal of the long suffering people of Zimbabwe. Torture is a crime under international law and President Mugabe should be prosecuted

"Mugabe has massacred more black Africans than even the murderous apartheid regime in South Africa. His tyrannical government is guilty of detention without trial, torture, rape, extra-judicial killings, media censorship, financial corruption, election fraud, mass starvation and the violent suppression of strikes and protests.

"Portugal has a duty to enforce the UN Convention Against Torture 1984, which it has ratified and pledged to uphold.

"The Convention Against Torture has universal jurisdiction. It allows any signatory state to arrest and put on trial any person who authorises, commits or acquiesces in the infliction of torture anywhere in the world.

"There is strong evidence from Amnesty International and other human rights groups that President Mugabe has sanctioned and colluded with acts of torture, contrary to international law.

"He should be arrested and put on trial, in the same way that President Milosevic of Yugoslavia was tried in The Hague.

"Contrary to diplomatic convention and some controversial, disputed legal rulings, Mugabe does not have absolute immunity from prosecution as a serving Head of State.

"International human rights law and legal precedents have established that Presidents can be indicted for gave crimes against humanity, such as torture," added Mr Tatchell.

See the article and detailed documentation below.

More information: Peter Tatchell 020 7403 1790

Note: Peter Tatchell will not be going to Lisbon for the EU-AU Summit.

Why Mugabe does not have immunity from prosecution for torture

By Peter Tatchell

International law increasingly no longer accepts the right of Heads of State to enjoy absolute immunity for grave human rights abuses, such as torture.

This legal evolution began with the Versailles Treaty of 1919. The signatory nations accepted that Heads of State cannot plead they are above the law when they stand accused of "offences against international morality". Article 227 of the Treaty set the precedent in international law that Heads of State are not immune from prosecution, when it arraigned the German Emperor, William II.

The 1946 Nuremberg Tribunal reiterated this precedent by ruling the top Nazi leaders, including Karl Doenitz, Hitler's successor as German leader, did not enjoy immunity for crimes against humanity. Doenitz was found guilty and sentenced to 10 years jail.

Principle Three of the Nuremberg Principles declared: "The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible Government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law".

For any country to renege on the Nuremberg Principles would be a monstrous betrayal of the millions who perished in the Holocaust and the millions more who sacrificed their lives to end the tyranny of the Third Reich.

The Nuremberg ruling that government leaders can be held accountable was reconfirmed with the enactment of the UN Convention Against Torture (UNCAT) 1984. Article 4 requires each state party to ensure that "all acts of torture" are criminal offences under domestic law.
This criminalisation must apply to an act by "any person" that "constitutes complicity or participation in torture". UNCAT grants no exemptions to Heads of State.

These precedents were given further practical effect by the International Criminal Tribunal on the former Yugoslavia when it indicted Slobodan Milosevic on 26 May 1999, while he was the serving Head of State of Yugoslavia. If Milosevic can be indicted, even though he was President at the time, why can't Mugabe?

The UN Rome Statute of 1998, ratified by the EU member states, created the International Criminal Court. Article 27 explicitly declares that Heads of States cannot plead immunity for crimes against humanity, such as torture: "Official capacity as a Head of State…shall in no case exempt a person from criminal responsibility under this Statute".

Is it acceptable for EU members to sign up the principle of universal accountability and then refuse to honour it?

Continuing the trend to void immunity for Heads of State for grave human rights abuses, the Liberian leader, Charles Taylor, was indicted on 4 June 2003. Despite being President, he was served an arrest warrant on charges of "serious violations of international humanitarian law".

Why is there one law for President Taylor and another for President Mugabe?

The double standards over Head of State immunity reached their zenith during the 2003 Iraq war, with two US attempts - on 20 March and 7 April - to assassinate the then Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein.
Western governments asserted the lawfulness of these attempts.

How can a Head of State be lawfully assassinated, but not lawfully prosecuted for crimes against humanity? If it is legitimate to assassinate a President, then surely a President can be put on trial?

In Mugabe's case, the EU has already agreed that his state immunity can be legitimately restricted. The EU travel ban on Mugabe is a punitive abrogation of his immunity as Head of State. It is directed against him in his official capacity as President of a regime that violates human rights on a massive scale. This sanction is an acknowledgement that Heads of State do not enjoy absolute immunity.
They should, and can, be held to account for grave crimes.

If Mugabe's immunity can be curtailed by a travel ban, why can't he be called to account in a court of law for violating the internationally agreed prohibition on the use of torture?

Ends

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Title: Behind the mask of remittances
Author: Firoze Manji
Category: Africa General
Date: 12/6/2007
Source: Pambazuka News 331
Source Website: www.pambazuka.org

Summary & Comment: The author looks at remittances and suggests there are grounds to question their overall value as a vehicle for development or social progress. DN

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Behind the mask of remittances

How often do we hear the phrase "remittances to Africa are a key source of development funding"? The volume of funds being remitted to Africa are certainly impressive. In 2005, we are told, "they totalled $188 billion-twice the amount of official assistance developing countries received. Moreover, there is evidence that such flows are underreported. Indeed, remittances through informal channels could add at least 50 percent to global recorded flows. Most of the reported flows go to regions other than sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), but SSA has still been part of the overall rising global trend. Between 2000 and 2005, remittances to the region increased by more than 55 percent, to nearly $7 billion, whereas they increased for developing countries as a group by 81 percent." (Gupta et al 2007).

Can such remittances be equated with 'development funding'? What is the evidence that this contributes significantly to the elimination of poverty? And if remittances of funds from workers in the North to their families in the South be considered as part of the infrastructure of 'development', then should not remittances of funds from the South to the North be also be considered as part of the equation?

The overwhelming majority of studies demonstrate that remittances are primarily used by households and families to help them survive the inadequate incomes that they already have. In times of crises, such supplementary income is used to "smooth household consumption and welfare". For the most part, these funds are used for consumption and payments for education, healthcare needs and food for subsistence. In other words, remittances are primarily used to supplement income because wages or income from agricultural production, petty-commodity production or 'jua kali' trade, or whatever activity people are engaged in to 'make a living' is inadequate. Remittances are not primarily used to create employment or develop new initiatives.

The reality is that the majority of rural families in Africa have long been dependent on the ability of members of their families who have jobs in urban centres to be able to remit a portion of their wages to help their families cope with impoverishment. This lies at the very heart of the system of underdevelopment that is characteristic of neo-colonial / post-apartheid economies as it was in the colonial and apartheid economies.

There is a close association between remittances and the maintenance of prevalence of low wages in Africa. One of the crucial determinants of low wages is the social cost of the reproduction of labour: from the employers point of view, the less it costs to enable the wage earner to survive and reproduce, the lower the wage needs to be. And the more people there are that are unemployed - the larger the 'reserve army of labour' - the harder it is for the worker to demand better wages, especially if they are unable to organise to put pressure on employers. If the families of workers are eking out an existence on marginalised land, a few pennies in the form of remittances from the employed worker makes all the difference.

When migrant workers (either transiently away from home or with more permanent residency in countries where wages are better) are able to supplement the cost of maintaining their families through remittances, then what they are doing is not only helping their families survive: they are also ensuring the maintenance of their families at no additional cost to their employer or the state. For the recipient, of course, these remittances are a lifeline since they have no other means of surviving - especially in the lean times.

But is this development? Surely not. Surely it is subsistence, barely enabling people keeping their head above the water. It is 'development' only if we were to consider that development is not about social progress but about providing charitable support to the poor. Remittances are essentially an individualised social support mechanism without which there would be even greater misery.

Now supposing the same funds were used, instead, to support people to organise for better living wages, for better social services, for better housing and healthcare. Such a use of remittances would certainly contribute to social progress, to real development. So long as remittances play only the role of providing charitable support, they perform the role of shoring up an existing unjust system that keeps people poor. Worse still, there is a potential for disabling Africa's people from becoming organised actors who can determine their own future.

As Paulo Freire (1970) put it: ". charity constrains the fearful and subdued, the 'rejects of life', to extend their trembling hands. True generosity lies in striving so these hands - whether of individuals or entire people - need be extended less and less in supplication, so that more and more they become human hands which work and, working, transform the world." Do remittances really help human hands transform the world?

But even if we were to accept that remittances may be legitimately considered as 'development funding' or as part of the infrastructure of development, then surely movements of funds in the opposite direction - from South to the North - should also be taken into account. It is surprising this aspect is systematically ignored by those obsessed with promoting the apparent benefits of remittances. When Africans send funds from the North to the South, this is called remittances. When multinationals remit profits to the North, or when countries in the South are made to remit a part of their gross domestic product to the banks in the North, somehow this is not considered as (negative) remittances. If movements of funds in one direction are to be taken into account in the process of development, then surely movements in the opposite direction also need to be taken into account. Surely, what is sauce for the goose is good for the gander?

Third World repayments of $340 billion each year flow northwards to service a $2.2 trillion debt, more than five times the G8's development aid budget (Dembele 2006). At more than $10 billion/year since the early 1970s, collectively, the citizens of Nigeria, the Ivory Coast, the DRC, Angola and Zambia have been especially vulnerable to the overseas drain of their national wealth. As Brussels-based debt campaigner Eric Toussaint concludes, 'Since 1980, over 50 Marshall Plans worth over $4.6 trillion have been sent by the peoples of the Periphery to their creditors in the Centre' (quoted by Patrick Bond 2005).

Research by the Tax Justice Network estimates that a staggering $11.5 trillion has been siphoned 'offshore' by wealthy individuals, held in tax havens where they are shielded from contributing to government revenues. "Around 30% of sub-Saharan Africa's GDP is moved offshore", writes John Christensen (2006) of TJN, "As several studies have suggested, this rate of capital flight means that Africa - a continent we are continually told is irrevocably indebted - may actually be a net creditor to the rest of the world."

In comparison, then, to the the wealth that is sucked out of Africa - which far exceeds the total amount of aid that comes from the North into Africa - the net value of 'remittances' (movements in both direction) is negative.

There are grounds, therefore, for questioning the overall value of remittances in development. That is not to say that sending money home doesn't help our families survive. Remittances remain essential for enabling the impoverished to cope with an unjust world that keeps them poor. But as a vehicle for social development and progress? I have my doubts.

*Firoze Manji is co-editor of Pambazuka News and executive director of Fahamu.

* Please send comments to:
editor@pambazuka.org or
comment online at:
http://www.pambazuka.org

References

Patrick Bond (2005): Dispossessing Africa's Wealth. Pambazuka News: http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/30074
John Christensen (2006). Tax Justice for Africa: A new development struggle: http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/31903
Demba Moussa Dembele (2005), Aid dependence and the MDGs, Pambazuka News: http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/29376
Paulo Freire (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Sanjeev Gupta, Catherine Pattillo, and Smita Wagh (2007): Making Remittances Work for Africa. Finance and Development 44 (2) 2007: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2007/06/gupta.htm