MEMORANDUM SUBMITTED BY ACTIONAID
In response to the Committee's recent announcement
of its inquiry into sanctions and invitation for submission of
memoranda of evidence, ActionAid is very pleased to attach, by
way of submission, an updated summary of a report on sanctions
in Burundi which was prepared in December 1998 for ActionAid.
The report is by Mr Gregory Mthembu-Salter, a consultant based
in Southern Africa who has a very extensive knowledge and experience
of the politics and economics of the Great Lakes region and of
East and Southern Africa more generally. The summary submitted
to the Committee was updated by Gregory in April 1999. The full
report represented a follow-up study to an earlier report on Burundi
sanctions prepared for ActionAid by Gregory in February 1997.
We must make it clear that the conclusions reached
in the report are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect
the views of ActionAid. We nevertheless commend the report highly
to the Committee for the high quality of the analysis, and because
it raises a number of crucially important issues of concern in
situations of regionalas opposed to UNsanctions
imposed against poor countries.
We would like to pinpoint here some of the issues
discussed in Gregory's report that ActionAid would particlarly
urge the Committee to explore in the course of its inquiry.
First, the Burundi case highlights the importance
of looking beyond UN sanctions. ActionAid's own experience of
working in countries under sanctions is dominated by our recent
experience in Burundi and Sierra Leone. In both cases, comprehensive
embargoes were imposed by neighbouring governments of the region.
In the case of Sierra Leone, the UN only imposed its own limited
sanctions some months after the regional embargo had already been
imposed by the neighbouring ECOWAS states. In Burundi, regional
governments took their own action, perhaps partly in the knowledge
that any potential imposition of UN (or even OAU) sanctions would
be seriously hampered by delay and/or lack of political will.
So the UN played only a secondary role in the sanctions against
Sierra Leone, and almost no role in the sanctions against Burundi.
The increasing recourse to sanctions as a substitute for military
action witnessed over recent years, plus the growing international
emphasis on "regional solutions to regional problems"
and the likely consequent decline in UN action in Africa and elsewhere,
make it imperative that more account be taken of regional sanctions
regimes in current debates and discussions about sanctions.
Crucial questions have yet to be adequately
addressed regarding the role of the UN system in situations of
regional sanctions, including, potentially, a greater role for
the UN in monitoring the imposition (and violations) of the sanctions,
and in monitoring humanitarian exemption arrangements and the
impacts of sanctions. Gregory's report draws attention to the
importance of ensuring high standards of sanctions monitoringsomething
which was not achieved in Burundi. Indeed, in this case, the regional
governments imposing the sanctions appear to have been among the
first to violate them, illustrating the potential for a combination
of vested interests and economic pressures to undermine multilateral
sanctions regimes after their initial imposition. In Sierra Leone,
the humanitarian exemptions eventually written into the ECOWAS
embargo and included in the later UN sanctions were not honoured
on the ground, with the result that no food and almost no medicine
entered the country throughout the period that the rebels held
power. Yet arms continued to flow across the border.
The Burundi experience highlights the difficult
political issues raised by UN and donor involvement in regional
sanctions situations. Gregory argues that the international community
kept relatively quiet about the sanctions against Burundi until
mid-1998, despite discontent about the sanctions among Western
states and humanitarian agencies, partly for fear of undermining
the assertion by the region of "African solutions to African
problems". But as the embargo continued, donors increased
their pressure for the sanctions to be lifted. The combination
of the regional inflexibility on lifting the sanctionslinked
in large part to the extent to which the sanctions had themselves
become embroiled in the complex politics and competing political
agendas of the regionand external donor pressure to see
the sanctions lifted, resulted, Gregory argues, in the sanctions
being suspended at the wrong time and for the wrong reasons. This,
he insists, has undermined sanctions as an effective policy instrument
in the region, and represents something of a blow to African diplomacy.
The Burundi experience also raises important
but difficult questions about the assistance role of the major
donors and official creditors where regional sanctions have been
imposed against a poor country. Gregory observes that the sanctions
against Burundi had their major economic impact through the resulting
de facto freeze on donor financing in the country, and the consequent
escalation in internal debt and external debt arrears. Indeed,
he concludes that Burundi has suffered more from reduced access
to international funds than from the embargo itself. Yet, since
the suspension of sanctions, there has only been a small increase
in international aid to Burundi. A recent report from the Brussels-based
International Crisis Group ("Quelles conditions pour la reprise
de la cooperation au Burundi?", April 1999; http://www.intl-crisis-group.org)
comments that the full resumption of assistance to Burundi will
depend on a peace agreement being reached at Arusha. The report
warns that donor pressure for an agreement to be signed, plus
Burundi's desperation for foreign aid to resume, could result
in rushed negotiations and cosmetic reforms, rather than a comprehensive
peace process which addresses all the many obstacles to peace
in the country.
It should be recognised that humanitarian exemptions
can never compensate on their own for the social damage and decline
in social indicators caused by comprehensive embargoes against
poor countries. Gregory draws attention to the deep and long-term
damage caused to Burundi's economy by the combination of war,
drought and sanctions. But he notes that the far-reaching social
and economic consequences of reduced foreign reserves, currency
depreciation, inflation, falling wage levels and negative or minimal
GDP growth cannot be corrected by exempting the importation of
anything.
In this context, it is important to note that
so-called "smart sanctions" such as visa restrictions
and financial sanctionsan issue that has recently come
to dominate much of the sanctions debate in the Northwere
simply not an option for those countries imposing sanctions against
Burundi and Sierra Leone. Because of the logistical challenges
involved and the limited ability of most states to apply such
measures, sanctions are likely to continue to take the form of
comprehensive trade embargoes when they are imposed by regional
governments or regional organisations. As a consequence, the economic
and humanitarian impacts of embargoes and humanitarian exemption
arrangements will remain crucial issues that cannot be side-stepped
by discussion of "smart sanctions".
A number of recent studies on sanctions highlight,
among other things, the political importance of minimising the
negative humanitarian and social impacts of sanctions in the target
state. We would like to commend to the Committee, in particular,
a study prepared in 1998 for the Canadian Department of Foreign
Affairs and International Trade by Barry Burciul, entitled: "United
Nations Sanctions: Policy Options for Canada". The report
represents an impressive and comprehensive appraisal of the key
political, administrative and humanitarian challenges that need
to be addressed in systems of UN-sponsored sanctions. One of the
report's key conclusions is that effective efforts to mitigate
the humanitarian impact of sanctions are likely to increase the
political effectiveness of these measures, rather than weaken
them. In the light of the failure of humanitarian exemptions in
Sierra Leone and the problems experienced with exemptions in Burundi,
urgent attention needs to be given to improving and strengthening
systems for administering and enforcing humanitarian exemptions.
Overall, much greater effort needs to be made
in future by regional governments, regional organisations, and
by the UN and major donors, to ensure the highest standards of
monitoring of sanctions and their impacts; to ensure that humanitarian
exemption mechanisms function as intended and are not impeded
in any way; to ensure that the common political objectives of
those imposing the sanctions remain clear, focused, explicit and
understood by the target states, and closely linked to a clear
and agreed process for lifting the sanctions according to achievement
of the political objectives; and to ensure that the sanctions
are flanked by an effective process of constructive diplomacy.
The Government has recently completed a review
of its policy on sanctions, with the involvement of all relevant
Whitehall departments. While this is to be welcomed, we are concerned
that the results of this review are to remain confidential. We
urge the Committee to seek detailed clarification of the Government's
evolving policy on sanctions from the FCO, MoD, DFID, DTI and
Treasury, and to appeal to the Government to take due account
of the issues raised in this submission.
We hope very much that this submission will
assist the Committee in its inquiry into sanctions. We look forward
to seeing the Committee's report on the inquiry when it is concluded.
Salil Shetty
Chief Executive, ActionAid
6 May 1999
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