Parliamentary Liaison - Conference - February 2003
Accountability and governance
QPSW public affairs conference: Woodbrooke 14-16 February 2003
Michael Bartlet introduced the Conference. The thinking behind it was this: that Friends had always attached great importance to integrity, but that the only way to guarantee integrity was by accountability. Therefore, political accountability was a necessary element in democratic institutions. The Lord Chancellor was a prime example of someone who was not obviously accountable and who, in the nature of his office, appeared to deny the concept of separation of powers.
Sometimes it was easier to oppose than to engage. Friends had been greatly respected for their conscientious objection: the question was, rather, how might Friends conscientiously engage. Therefore, for example-
- could the US hold itself to account as a military force?
- how could the United Nations turn the aspirations of the Non-Proliferation Treaty into reality?
- how might creative peaceful solutions be found to conflict situations? (a UK example would be a final peaceful settlement in NI).
It was lack of accountability that had led to such things as Zircon, the Matrix-Churchill affair, and the Chevaline programme. In the latter case, how could Parliament have held the Government to account when it did not know of the Chevaline programme's existence? Similarly, if information is kept from voters, on what basis could they make rational choices when exercising their vote? Was it right that only the US should have had access to the full, unexpurgated details of the Weapons Inspectors' Report on Iraq?
He hoped also that the conference could affirm good decision-making.
The regional dimension: David Shutt
David Shutt was in his last ten weeks as a councillor in Calderdale. On 1 March he would go to the meeting to fix the new rate of council tax and it would no doubt rise by between 10-15 per cent. This was difficult to explain in simple terms: the major reason was that central government is not particularly bothered about local government and in order to keep income tax and VAT at reasonable levels, revenue support grant continues to fall as a total percentage of local authority spending - which led to the question, 'how could a local authority be "in charge" when of expenditure when there was no steady state'? Moreover, a lot of local government money was now disbursed through "special offers" (City Challenge and suchlike) requiring bids for particular pots of money related to particular schemes.
Part of the problem was that political parties were shells, and he had previously asked Friends to get involved. The BNP was now learning to fill the void. The void was partly left by a decline of the Conservative Party, but the Labour Party was also likely to face a decline. The BNP had won a seat on 29 per cent in a five-way fight.
Devolution was a reaction primarily to the desire of the Scots for more control over their own affairs and (in London) a desire to compensate for the abolition of the GLC. The Government has promised to look at devolution in England, partly because of a desire to give the regions a say in their own affairs, and partly because there was already considerable administrative devolution, but without democratic accountability. But devolution would not happen unless a majority votes for it in a referendum.
The Regional Assemblies (Preparations) Bill currently before Parliament provides both for referendums and for the substitution of unitary authorities for two-tier systems. It says nothing about the powers to be devolved nor much about how the assemblies will operate - though it seems to contemplate the GLA model, with about 25-30 elected members for each devolved authority and a cabinet of six. The question still remains, how much can be entrusted to devolved institutions?
Well-designed regional government could be very valuable. Few people realised the importance of non-departmental public bodies in all this: Calderdale was currently involved in a hundred and one partnership projects with government agencies. Regional government could be an important mechanism for holding those government agencies to account.
In order to facilitate a frank exchange of views Sam Daws reiterated that he was speaking on a purely personal basis, and that his views therefore did not necessarily reflect those of the United Nations.
The first question he posed was what did "accountability" actually mean? The Concise Oxford defined accountability as "to be bound, to give account", while Webster included the notion of being willing to give account, thus raising the possibility of a voluntary or self-determining element to the concept of accountability. A workable definition seemed to include:
- transparency in decision-making,
- criteria for judgement of decisions,
- monitoring and measuring compliance, and
- mechanisms for enforcement in the absence of voluntary compliance.
Notions of accountability in the economic and social field came to the fore in the 1970s, in the argument over North-South economic relations and the calls for a New International Economic Order (NIEO). But that debate had failed, and leadership in economic decision-making passed back to the developed countries. By the 1980s many developing countries were espousing neo-liberal free market economics, in part through fear that they would lose inward investment. The marginalisation of the UN began to change in the 1990s with a decade of world conferences which through their programmes of action collectively produced a new UN-led development agenda. The approach to the private sector changed too, with a focus on the positive role business can play in development, and the establishment of the UN's Global Compact.
The famous Millennium Summit of world leaders in 2000 produced the Millennium Declaration and a new set of development goals. Perhaps even more significantly, the UN reached agreement with the World Bank and the IMF on indicators for securing these goals (reflecting the second level of our working definition of accountability, above). The problem with these goals is that they are lofty (e.g. the laudable goal of by 2015 reducing by two-thirds the mortality rate among children under five) and risk being ignored as the international community turns its focus to terrorism or war. It is in part the job of Eveline Hefkens, the former Dutch minister for development cooperation, to ensure that this does not happen. She has recently been appointed by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to lead the campaign on the monitoring of progress towards reaching the Millennium Declaration Goals (or MDGs). Her focus has already been on individual country performance, and she uses almost every speech to "name and shame" those countries which are falling short. This is not typical UN language, but it is essential if we are to achieve the ambitious targets established by the Summit, and it reflects a clear desire to introduce accountability into the equation, in this case through the mechanism of voluntary compliance.
More radical proposals to enhance accountability in the international economic and social field have included the creation of a UN Economic and Social Security Council, or the expansion of the G7 to become a G20, to include leading developing countries such as India and Brazil.
The human rights field has seen faster progress towards accountability. Human rights monitoring has been expanded through an elaborate machinery, both country-orientated and thematic, involving Special Rapporteurs, working groups and fact-finding missions. However the UN human rights system continues to face chronic underfunding and there are still few sanctions against abuses - the power of "naming and shaming" will inevitably have a lesser effect on totalitarian regimes whose abuses are greater, than on democratic ones. Furthermore, while civil and political rights are now seen as having legal parity with economic, social and cultural rights, in practice it is much harder to determine what constitutes a violation of the latter, and to determine who should be held accountable. On the other hand, the establishment of the International Criminal Court has been a landmark on the route towards international accountability for individuals. Kofi Annan has said that the ICC holds the promise of a world in which the perpetrators of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes are prosecuted when States are unable or unwilling to bring them to justice. And it gives the world a potential deterrent to future atrocities.
As to political accountability for peace and security, the UN Security Council was charged under the UN Charter with primary responsibility for maintaining international peace and security: Military force can therefore only be used under the authorisation of the Security Council. The only exception to this is that a State may use force in self-defence, and only when faced with an actual or imminent armed attack. The UN Charter also emphasises state sovereignty as a building block of international law, and prohibits interference in the internal affairs of other States. But what happens when there is a humanitarian or human rights catastrophe in a country? Does the international community or individual member states have a right to intervene to help the "peoples" of that country, despite the bar in the Charter on the use of force, and despite the bar on interference in internal affairs?
Kofi Annan has argued, most notably in a series of speeches in 1998 and 1999 that state frontiers should no longer be seen as offering a watertight protection for war criminals and mass murderers, and the fact that a conflict is 'internal' does not give the parties any right to disregard the most basic rules of human conduct. This gives rise to the issue of "humanitarian intervention", but begs the question of who has the right to intervene. Kofi Annan has cautioned whether we can really afford to allow each country to be the judge of its own right, or duty, to intervene in another State's conflict. If we do, are we not in danger of being forced to legitimise Hitler's championship of the Sudetan Germans, or Soviet intervention in Afghanistan? His reply was that if humanitarian intervention is to be conducted, it needs to be done collectively, and that only the Security Council, assigned this responsibility under the Charter, is in a position to authorise such action. Subsequently Kofi Annan has cautioned about the use of the term "humanitarian intervention" to refer to military action for humanitarian purposes since there is nothing "humanitarian" about a bomb.
The concept of humanitarian intervention also rings "alarm bells" for many countries, which fear that it will be an excuse for neo-imperialism, will descend into vigilantism when done without Security Council approval, is subject to double standards by the West, and has questionable long-term efficacy, since there was an important and fundamental question as to whether humanitarian intervention using military means brought lasting benefits. In this sense humanitarian intervention is also part of the wider ends-and-means dilemma that besets much of the UN's enforcement action. Sanctions, for example, may have full Security Council authorisation, but yet also entail unwanted negative humanitarian consequences. It is clearly essential that problems are treated with the right tools, and that early prevention is invariably the best cure. Early action of a non-military kind at the first signs of human rights or humanitarian disaster can make military intervention unnecessary, or a rare act of last resort.
So how can we apply accountability to those undertaking or contemplating "humanitarian intervention"? One policy analyst has suggested four threshold criteria for determining the justice of an intervention: that there be "just cause" - a supreme humanitarian emergency; that all peaceful means have been explored; that the use of force should result in more good than harm (and that means be calibrated to ends); and lastly that there is a high probability of success. We could usefully add that the intervention must be welcomed by the people at risk. The risk of abuse has led to some questioning the very concept of humanitarian intervention. Indeed the final report of the independent and well-respected International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty decided not to use that phrase, and instead chose to focus on "the responsibility to protect". The Commission decided that accountability should first rest with the government of the country that was suffering a humanitarian or human rights catastrophe. Only when that government was unwilling or unable to act would the international community have a responsibility (rather than a right) to intervene.
Returning to the exception in the UN Charter which permits unilateral action by States without prior UN approval - the right to engage in military action for self-defence. Can self-defence be used by countries to validate military action against Iraq? International lawyers do not agree on this point, but most say it cannot. Some lawyers argue instead that military action is justified in implementation of previous Council resolutions under Chapter VII of the Charter that require Iraq's disarmament. Security Council Resolution 687 implies that a ceasefire would only come into effect once Iraq had complied with its agreed disarmament obligations. Since UN weapons inspectors, and previous UN Security Council resolutions had stated that Iraq was not yet in compliance in its disarmament, it could be argued that military action to enforce these resolutions was justified. Whatever the legal merit of this approach, Security Council Resolution 1441 arguably made it less tenable by appearing to place the onus again on the Security Council to explicitly determine compliance and to decide on next enforcement steps.
However, accountability is as much about political as about legal legitimation. It is quite possible that the US, with a coalition of some European and other States will decide to go it alone if another Security Council resolution is not forthcoming. In that case it will ultimately be the outcome of any military action that determines retrospectively the political legitimacy of the intervention. From all accounts - Amnesty International, refugees, UN staff inside Iraq etc., the human rights situation within Iraq under President Saddam Hussein is so appalling, his regime so brutal and repressive of any dissent, that it is quite possible that if President Hussein and his close associates are removed from power as a necessary element to assuring cooperation from Iraq in giving up its weapons of mass destruction, that the out-flowing of joy and relief from ordinary people in the country will equal the positive reaction from the person on the street in Afghanistan (in that case especially women) freed from Taliban rule. One must stress the word "possible" since there are so many things that can go wrong, and which would lessen the perceived political legitimacy of military action. These include the need to avoid major casualties on either side, the need to implement a workable governance structure in the aftermath of conflict, run by Iraqis, and free from outside interference; and a commitment to economic and social assistance over years rather than months to help rebuild the country.
With all the propaganda that is being expressed from many sources in the lead up to a possible war, it is important for Friends to acknowledge the disturbing side of Saddam Hussein's worldview. His own words speak volumes. In a signed personal letter he sent to the UN Security Council (UN document S/2001/888 of 19 September 2001) addressed to the people of the West, one week after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, he asserted that the attacks on the Word Trade Centre and Pentagon were in fact the result of a Zionist conspiracy:
"…Zionism has been planning for domination over the world since its famous conference held at Basle, Switzerland, in 1897. Ever since then it has been working in this direction. It has scored palpable successes by its control over financial, media and commercial centres in your countries and whoever rules in your name. But its domination is so far not yet fully achieved so as to make its will absolute and final. The masterminds of Zionism are therefore working for a clash between Christianity and Islam on the assumption that only thereby can they dominate the world. Is there anything better for the thieving dog than to find his household preoccupied by grief so that it can seize the thing it has set its eye on, the thing that whetted its appetite?…"
Thus while Friends rightly uphold peace and non-violence, it is also essential to acknowledge the potential for (as in apartheid South Africa, for example) structural violence within society itself as a direct consequence of the Saddam Hussein regime. The application of the Peace Testimony has never been simple. The brutality of the Hussein regime, coupled with the potential consequences of military action to overthrow him, raise difficult questions. It beholds us as Friends, as 'seekers after truth' to simultaneously uphold these complex and parallel truths, and to work for peace and non-militaristic approaches through multilateral means without diminishing or glossing over the terrible atrocities continued to be committed by a regime that most Friends would objectively regard as illegitimate. In this spirit Sydney Bailey has quoted Sir Laurens van de Post: "To me the most urgent problem of our time is the problem of discovering a way of overcoming evil without becoming another form of evil in the process". One of the strengths of Friends' commitment to truth, is that we go beyond simplistic characterising of political situations. Accountability also applies to us. In grappling with our own search for truth and understanding, and our interpretation of truth (as we see it) to others, it is arguably our ability to engage with empathy with those with whom we profoundly disagree, and our willingness to seek to learn from them as much as would like to change them, that is the mark and measure of our accountability to truth.
Another perennial "accountability dilemma" that faces Friends was that the UN was not a pacifist organisation: military action as a last resort was at the heart of its founders' vision of collective security in an imperfect world. Indeed Dag Hammarskjöld and Henry Cabot Lodge are both attributed with the quotation that the UN "is created to prevent you from going to hell. It isn't created to take you to heaven". Thus while personally remaining pacifists, Quakers have often argued for greater use of multilateral bodies and international law, even though these often legitimise military action. Indeed William Penn, in his Essay Towards the Present and Future Peace of Europe, published in 1693, advocated an embryonic League of Nations or UN. His proposals assumed that nations were not pacifist in outlook, and he thus provided for the employment of military sanctions as a last resort if arbitration failed, indeed advocating a structure reminiscent of NATO's traditional deterrence model.
Since 11 September 2001, the wider context for international accountability has also changed. Two years ago the focus would not have been on the Security Council as a bastion of accountability and legitimation; rather its legitimacy was questioned, and it was described by some as anachronistic and in need of radical reform. Some had suggested that the UN was becoming irrelevant - and yet, recent world events seemed to indicate that accountability and the proper operation of international law were needed more than ever before; that the UN in fact remained indispensable.
On reform of the Security Council, the main present obstacle to expansion was not the opposition of permanent members, but divisions between "aspirant" permanent member states such as India and Brazil, and smaller developing states who see no advantage in new permanent members which were not certain to represent their interests. Enhanced accountability through the mechanism of judicial review of Security Council resolutions or vetoes by the International Court of Justice, or political review by the General Assembly, was unlikely to materialise.
Barry Coates - World Development Movement
The WDM was a campaigning movement set up in the 1970s set up by the churches, with the focus that poverty was political and that structural change was required to attack global poverty. Its most notable victory had been over the Pergau Dam, when the money diverted from the aid budget to finance the dam had had to be returned to it. The WDM had been a founder-member of Jubilee 2000, and was conducting a debt campaign at the moment. It also campaigned on trade issues such as access for sugar and textiles into the EU. Surprisingly, it received a limited amount of 'no-strings' EU funding. It also formed alliances with other organisations such as Save the Children and the trades unions.
His main focus was change in the global economy. There had been enormous changes over the last thirty years, with power being transferred from the UN to the IMF and the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation. In addition, there had been a rise in the power of global companies and global capital markets. He noted that Lula had been elected President of Brazil on a radical platform, but had then been obliged to tailor his policies to what would be acceptable to international financial institutions and capital markets.
After World War II there had been attempt to set up an international trade organisation under the Havana Charter. It never came into force: the US did not ratify the Charter because it included a sovereign right to control foreign investment - to which the US would not agree.
Accountability included not only propriety, but also the need for countries to have power to control their economies. Tariffs had fallen, but were still high on goods such as agriculture and textiles - which were precisely what developing countries could most easily produce and export - and finished goods as opposed to raw materials (eg cocoa as against chocolate).
The World Trade Organisation [WTO] was trying to lower tariffs, but with mixed results. Competitive countries were doing well, while uncompetitive countries were seeing their industries wiped out. Often the developing countries had gone further than developed countries in reducing tariffs. They were being forced to open up markets, and this militated against development of nascent industries. There had been a 10 per cent fall in per capita income in Sub-Saharan Africa - for the poorest, income had dropped by 2 per cent per year. This drop was attributable to IMF /World Bank pressure to liberalise - and they were still inserting privatisation obligations into offers of financial assistance to developing countries. Sub-Saharan Africa traded more as a proportion of its economies than did Europe: the loss of trade barriers inhibited its development.
The WTO was also focusing on other barriers within domestic economies, such as environmental regulation and universal postal obligations. Under the trade rules, efforts were shifting from tariffs and quotas to internal regulation. . Services were over half the economy, even in developing countries; and the rules under the General Agreement on Trade and Services [GATS] were therefore vitally important. The premise was that removal of barriers would make everyone better off: in short, neo-liberal economic theory. But neo-liberalism ignored the issue of who would lose if others were to benefit?
Without pressure from the American service corporations there would have been no Service Agreement. Governments tended to do what was good for business; the argument was that government regulation was bad for corporate profitability - and short-term profits tended to be a major focus for multinationals. Therefore, for example, the EU had been pressing for developing countries to open up water supplies to French multinationals. In that connexion, it should be noted that the US had brought the issue of the EU banana subsidy before the WTO under the services part of GATS, because the US processed bananas but did not grow them.
Decisions under GATS were in essence irreversible, since to reverse a decision required virtual unanimity. One of the rules was that governments cannot limit new foreign service providers - which meant, for examle, that Egypt could not limit for environmental reasons foreign tour operators on the White Nile. Once an agreement like GATS was in place, the power of governments to regulate in the public interest was reduced accordingly.
GATS was dominated by the US and the EU. Negotiations were conducted between ministers of national governments assisted by their civil servants. Because the Agreement had come out of a mercantilist ethos, the interests of business loomed very large so that, for example, a UK corporate lobby group existed that included not only representatives of business, but also of the Treasury and the DTI. Haliburton (formerly headed by Dick Cheney) was the second-biggest recipient of World Bank loans. Therefore, he would argue that Government tends to favour business over the wider public interest.
International trade liberalisation seemed to have three dimensions:
- the momentum that operated within international organisations (liberalism is the economic orthodoxy), so that, for example, the WB was still telling countries to open up to capital inflows,
- the UK had the second-largest stock of foreign investment after the US (partly as a hangover from colonialism), so the UK tended to define trade policy as "what is in our national interest", and
- industry was better at lobbying governments than pressure-groups were at holding them to account.
The present Government seemed to be defending the interests of business partly because they would argue that they were pro-business and that globalisation was good for the poor. The facts did not seem to support that stance: the only exception to the general rule was China - the most regulated major country in the world. But the size of China unbalanced the equation. In addition, British business was seen as helping to spread British influence overseas.
It was not simply a question of rich North vs poor South: there was a global international elite with very little accountability to anyone, who shared the same life-styles, attitudes and cultural norms. He also noted that young people were political, but not party political: therefore, change was not coming from within the parties, but from outside pressure.
A lot of the economic programme of QPSW coincided with the interests of the WDM. For example, a tripartite discussion between NGOs, trades unions and business had agreed that they should observe ILO employment standards in developing countries. He wondered why Government was not doing this. There appeared to be a structural problem: if a domestic government tried to regulate labour, investment might be switched to a country with a softer regime. Equally, why did not consumers make more stringent demands on producers as to standards and accountability? There were no international laws on monopolies or labour standards: why not?
Many of the current transport and trade links were formed in colonial times, and colonies were not encouraged to trade with each other. Increasingly, developing countries were beginning to trade with each other through agreements such as MERCOSUR, though there was not yet any comparable arrangement in Africa. There is also a question of scale: the entire Sub-Saharan economy was about the same size as the economy of Belgium.
It was the system itself, not necessarily the people running it, that causes the problems. It was not longer a matter of Marxism vs capitalism, but rather a question of justice and sustainability.
