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RIGHTS: Recession Bringing Repression
By Sanjay Suri
LONDON, May 28, 2009 (IPS) - The underside of the global economic recession is a worldwide repression of
rights, Amnesty International secretary-general Irene Khan warned Thursday at
the launch of the human rights group's 2009 report.
"The economic crisis is aggravating pre-existing human rights problems
such as marginalisation of indigenous peoples, the situation of forced
evictions of slum dwellers, and the issue of refugees and migrants," she told
IPS in an interview.
"The economic crisis is also throwing up new problems," she said. "We have
seen over the last year people turning out on the streets to protest in 17
countries, and when that happened, governments, particularly those of an
authoritarian bent, turned on those demonstrations in very harsh ways.
"We have seen people killed in Tunisia, in Cameroon, we have seen the
police use excessive force in other places like Egypt, Mali, Senegal. We are
seeing more repression coming out of the recession."
Apart from the crackdown on people hit by the recession, Khan said, "some
very important human rights problems are not getting the attention and the
resources they need. I'm talking about issues like violence against women,
and also talking about issues like armed conflicts in Darfur or Somalia or the
Congo or Afghanistan or Pakistan."
Governments, she said, "are investing in putting the market straight again.
But the market is not going to address human rights problems. When you are
going in with an economic recovery package, if you only focus on putting
businesses back on their feet, and in putting banks straight, then you miss
out on the poor people, and if you don't tackle poverty, then you are not
going to have a sustainable economic recovery plan."
The World Bank, she said, had talked about 53 million people being pushed
back into poverty as a result of the recession. "Last year the food crisis
affected 150 million or so people. That means that all the progress that has
been made over the past decade has been wiped away."
The London-based Amnesty is looking at the recession as a second major
blow to rights, after the erosion of rights following the Sept. 11 attacks.
"In the past we saw governments use security as a means to undermine
human rights," Khan said. "What we are now seeing is that the economic
crisis has produced another imperative for governments, and they are again
ignoring human rights.
"So a kind of 9/11 scenario has moved to a kind of 9/15 scenario; 9/11 in
2001 was the attack on the twin towers, and 9/15 was the crash of the
Lehman Brothers bank. So for economic reasons - whether they are excuses
or they are deliberate, probably a combination of both - governments want
to avoid focusing on human rights issues."
Amnesty International has now launched a Demand Dignity campaign to
fight for rights threatened by the economic crisis, and for those being
ignored as a result of it.
"Under the Demand Dignity campaign we want to end human rights abuses
that create poverty and that keep people poor," Khan said. "We are looking at
poverty as an issue not just of income but also as an issue of the rights of
people living in poverty - their participation, equal access to human rights
for all people, and particularly accountability of governments, financial
institutions and businesses."
Amnesty, she said, will campaign to end forced evictions of people from
slums. It will work to ensure women have a voice in reproductive and sexual
health rights, "and we are going to look at the extractive industry, and call
for the corporate accountability" of that industry.
The fundamental issue, she said, is "empowerment of people living in
poverty. The best strategy is their participation rights: their voice, the
transparency and accountability of governments, so that they can hold
governments accountable, and they can also participate in decisions that
affect them." (END)
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