Irene Khan: ‘Companies too need to respect human rights’

Her father was a doctor in Dhaka, Bangladesh. That means she experienced a relatively well protected youth, though as a teenager she lived through the war between eastern and western Pakistan, and later when she settled in Northern Ireland she ended up in yet another violent conflict. It marked her vision on conflicts: ‘Hidden underneath the superficial contrast between Pakistan and Bangladesh or between the catholic and protestant Irish, the conflict invariably revolved around economic and social opportunities as well as discrimination’.

By studying law, Irene Khan discovered that legislation is an immensely powerful tool in the fight against injustice, inequality and discrimination. But the thousands of interviews she conducted for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) brought her to the understanding that laws alone were not enough to give people their rights and their dignity. ‘I realized that even proper laws are worthless if victims are not in a capacity to organize themselves and can’t stand up for their own rights’.

MO* talked with Irene Khan in the Palais des Nations in Geneva, where she was invited by the UN Human Rights Council to take part in a panel discussion about the impact of the financial and economic crisis.

Why do you define poverty as the worst human rights violation?

People are stuck in poverty because their human rights are being violated. The most important cause of poverty is discrimination or insecurity. According to the World Bank report ‘The Voices of the Poor’, for which interviews were conducted with more than 60.000 people in about twenty countries, the most common thread is the poor people’s lack of power: people who are not in a position to take the future into their own hands, people who do not know whether or not they will still have a job or an income tomorrow, people without the certainty of being able to put enough food on the table for themselves and their children at the end of the day… It’s not my intention of changing the definition of poverty or human rights, but of meeting reality eye to eye and clearly seeing what poverty is really all about.

If you look closely enough, you’ll find out that poverty can’t be solved with money alone.

That’s right, although you do need that money of course. But even if more schools were built, girls wouldn’t automatically be attending school in larger numbers. Investments in the agricultural industry don’t necessarily bring about more security for small farmers over their own land. In Mexico millions of women from the interior have migrated towards the border region with the United States, looking to improve their economic situation. Their revenues have surely increased, but they ended up amidst the front line of brutal violence against women, which for example we have recorded in Ciudad Juárez and other places.

How does ‘having a voice’ constitute a difference in the examples you just gave?

Having a voice means you acquire a part in the decisions that influence your life. That sounds very obvious, but it is often neglected. Among other things this is due to the belief that poor people are incapable of making the right decisions themselves: they are illiterate or unskilled, they don’t have all the information or they are not aware of the consequences. Of course, that’s a shamefully flawed reasoning. Moreover, many people believe that a restricted society is more suited for development than a participative democracy, even though there are no statistical data establishing a link between development and repression. On the contrary: examples such as Burma and Zimbabwe demonstrate how the lack of freedom can seriously cause a country to collapse into poverty. I know that against these dramatic examples people often brandish the experience of China, where a lack of political freedom is accompanied by impressive economic growth. But I am not convinced there is a causal connection between those two.

Perhaps inequality in China is not as great as we think it is?

China has invested in the fundamental economic and social rights of its population. But the lack of policy transparency and accountability actually does lead to problems. Because of that shortcoming it takes much longer before policy reacts to the rise of excessive inequality, ecological degradation and the lack of rights for domestic migrants. A society where civilians do not have a voice, where free press is not allowed and where it’s impossible to express your own opinion, risks a higher chance of falling prey to corruption, which in turn often generates poverty. Development is best served by political systems that give people a true say in the matter.

So western liberal democracy is the best system after all?

I wouldn’t quite put transparency, participation and accountability on a par level with western democracies. Too many scandals with abuse of public means and power have happened for that. Democracy entails more than elections and a formal parliament. First of all it’s a process that increasingly involves people with the policy that concerns them. For more than twenty years Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen has been putting forward the connection between freedom and development, but surprisingly very little has been done with that crucial insight. Some governments state they wish to achieve social and economic rights first, after which they will make time for political and civil rights. Other governments claim that first and foremost you need to work on political rights and freedom, and that social and economic rights will ensue automatically. I accept neither point of view. The poor should have a voice in the debate, but at the same time they need to be able to make ends meet.

Aren’t you asking too much of the governments in developing countries?

For years plans have been made in the Philippine city of Cebu in order to improve the situation of slum dwellers, but they failed one by one. It was only when the people themselves united and engaged in a dialogue with the government that plans came about putting the concerns and the needs of the inhabitants in the forefront, and it were these plans that actually amounted to something when money became available to implement them. In 2005 India enacted the Freedom of Information Act (FIA), a  law on the public nature of government. This law has fundamentally shifted the balance of power, because it has made government policy more transparent. People are now more able to see the difference between the rights they have and its remnants in reality.

The law provides anything but an ideal world, but it is a considerable step ahead. In Rajasthan for instance, thanks to the FIA villagers found out the difference between the amount of food aid allocated by the government and the number of sacks of rice distributed by the local government. Because they knew this, it became possible for them to demand  rectification (about the problems of this FIA, see ‘Right on information in India’ on www.MO.be). In Bangladesh as well, where recently a similar law was adopted, you see that human rights groups and NGO’s use this instrument together with women, slum dwellers, farmers or other impoverished or marginalized groups to work on the improvement of their rights and their lives. But a law on the public nature of government only makes sense in a broader context of freedom of press and the ability to express one’s own opinion.

‘With the money spent on the financial bail-outs we could send every child in the world to school, half a million maternal lives could be saved or millions of people could be provided with clean water.’

Do you see any progress as far as freedom of speech is concerned?

On the one hand freedom is growing as more and more people are capable of spreading information through facebook, twitter, mobile phones – remember the images of Burma that spread around the globe, despite the massive and heavy-handed attempts by the army to prevent that. In Iran people have access to information through internet and dish antennae, which the government is trying to ban. On the other hand you see that control over the media is increasing. I’m not only talking about the actions of governments, but also about the concentration of media in the hands of a few commercial groups. This clearly threatens the freedom of information and the freedom of speech. For the pressure to make a profit also determines what is reported on and what is left out of scope. And so the question which human rights obligations global players need to abide by is becoming increasingly urgent.

And the answer to that question is?

I think everyone holding power needs to be accountable. It is naturally clear that multinational companies and financial groups wield tremendous power, so they can no longer avoid taking up their responsibility regarding human rights. Interesting steps have been taken with voluntary company regulations, but as these will not be sufficient in the end, internationally recognized, enforceable human rights standards for companies should be established. I believe these standards will be established because companies are making the case for equal treatment. Belgian companies investing in the Congo today are probably more under pressure of an alert and well-informed public opinion than Chinese businesses. They will be urged themselves to demand and accept standardized regulations.

In other words: if the powerful players benefit from making responsibilities universal, then they will pursue that goal?

If companies work together to establish universally valid regulations, then I’m not really concerned how they achieve that, as long as the end result is that companies can be held accountable for the way they deal with human rights. And if they violate human rights, there should be a sanction mechanism in place. That’s what counts, because such a breakthrough would undoubtedly benefit poor and vulnerable communities.

Are human rights more important than development aid?

I don’t see the contradiction. International aid is a duty within an international human rights framework, not an option. Especially during the current economic crisis, caused by the rich countries but mainly striking poor countries. There is, by the way, a legal basis for this framework. The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights commits governments to provide health care, education, housing and so on, and acknowledges that governments can phase the implementation of those rights according to the means they possess. At the same time, the Covenant states there is an obligation to international aid in order to help the concerned governments. In other words: whoever has the means, must help those who don’t have them. On the other hand there is an obligation to use that aid properly, which means an obligation to transparency and accountability. The biggest problem relating to development aid today however, is the availability of the necessary means. Aid budgets are being cut back once again, while huge sums have been made available to bail out the banks. With all that money we could send every child on earth to school, half a million maternal lives could be saved or millions of people could be provided with clean water.

Only, it wasn’t so much the governments being responsible for the financial crisis, but rather the banks and from a broader perspective: the financial world.

Responsibility not only exists for actions but also for negligence. That governments have neglected to control and regulate sufficiently the financial systems make them jointly responsible for the excesses and financial crimes committed under their supervision. But this applies to an even greater extent to those who carried and still carry the responsibility in the financial world. Because of their irresponsible behaviour, many vulnerable migrants are losing their jobs meaning their families at home are deprived of an income, as a result of which millions of children can no longer attend school. That puts a heavy burden on the future prospects of millions of people. Lots of children fall sick due to impure water. So much money has been used to fill the bottomless holes in the financial system that no means are left to invest in the rights of the poor.

Human rights are universal, but how about the responsibility of states for people who are illegally residing on their territory?

The Sans-Papiers are not people without rights. Human rights are not acquired by means of residency papers, you are entitled to them on the basis of your humanity. Anyone who lacks legal residency papers still has a right to health care. And his children have a right to education. We can’t allow that someone is treated inhumanely on the grounds of a mere formal agreement about papers. Anyone who is apprehended has a right to a fair trial, regardless of his resident status. Europe may build as many walls as it wants, as long as inequality and poverty in the world remain this large, migrants and refugees can’t be stopped anyway. We need a broader approach that not only focuses on the ways to stop migrants, but invests more in the fight against poverty and insecurity.