[dehai-news] (Guardian, UK) Sovereignty, not human rights, is key in Africa


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From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Mon Jul 07 2008 - 10:05:24 EDT


Why Africans keep quiet on Mugabe

Sovereignty, not human rights, is key in Africa and it's behind the survival
of the Zimbabwean president
All comments ()<http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/07/zimbabwe?commentpage=1>

   - *Blessing-Miles
Tendi*<http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/blessingmilestendi>
   - guardian.co.uk <http://www.guardian.co.uk/>,
   - Monday July 7, 2008
   - Article history

 Western countries continue to express frustration at the reluctance of
African states to present a united front against Robert Mugabe's
undemocratic re-election as president of Zimbabwe.

At the heart of this disappointment is a failure to appreciate that, in
spite of Africa's elegantly worded declarations about espousing human rights
and democracy, these ideals continue to be trumped by the principle of
sovereignty.

Modern African and European conceptions of sovereignty are influenced by
different historical experiences. The determining historical experience of
the former is external conquest, domination and exploitation at the hands of
colonial forces. The formative experience of the latter is the second world
war, in which untold destruction, along with the Holocaust, instigated grave
shock and revulsion in the European psyche.

For Europe, one of the lessons of the second world war and the Holocaust was
that if states are left to their own devices, and a blind eye turned to
their domestic activities in the name of respecting sovereignty, they may
perpetrate terrible human rights abuses.

The European Union's adoption of the European convention for the protection
of human rights and fundamental
freedoms<http://conventions.coe.int/treaty/EN/Treaties/html/005.htm>in
1950 had its genesis in a strong European consensus that human rights
violations such as the Holocaust were never to be repeated on European soil.
EU member states are today bound by strict codes of conduct demanding
respect for the rule of law, non-discrimination, prohibition of torture and
slavery, freedom of religion and expression, and the staging of regular free
and fair elections. The EU's elaborate and robust human rights regime has
weakened the sovereignty of member states considerably.

For Africa, a lesson of the colonial experience is that if states do not
safeguard their sovereignty, they risk falling prey to external forces of
domination and exploitation. Indeed, had the modern-day international system
of states been as hostile as that of the 18th century, when conquest and
aggressive domination of weaker states was the norm, most African states
would, most likely, be under external control. In Africa, sovereignty is an
"inversion of colonialism" and an important prerogative when it comes to
resisting claims and encroachments coming from outside national boundaries -
the right to say no. It is an invaluable means of self-defence against
external intrusion, which is viewed with deep suspicion given Africa's
legacy of colonial conquest and exploitation.

Independent African states have consistently sought to maintain and
strengthen their sovereignty. This practice was first conveyed explicitly in
the 1963 charter of the organisation of African unity
(pdf)<http://www.africa-union.org/root/au/Documents/Treaties/text/OAU_Charter_1963.pdf>(OAU),
which sought to preserve and reinforce the sovereignty of African
states in two ways:

First, the OAU Charter made it clear that the violation or changing of
Africa's ex-colonial national boundaries was strictly prohibited.

Second, it barred all African states from attempting to carry out political
assassinations or any other subversive activities in another African state.

The African Union<http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/07/zimbabwe/www.africa-union.org>(AU)
replaced the OAU as Africa's supreme continental body in 2002. The AU
largely reaffirmed its predecessor's commitment to upholding sovereignty in
Africa. Article 4 of the constitutive act of the
AU<http://www.africa-union.org/root/au/AboutAu/Constitutive_Act_en.htm#Article4>states
that the AU shall function in accordance with the following
principles: respect of borders existing on achievement of independence;
prohibition of the use of force or threat to use force among member states
of the Union; and non-interference by any member state in the internal
affairs of another. Sovereignty remains a powerful motivating factor in
Africa and no amount of screaming from across the Mediterranean Sea will
alter this state of affairs in the short term. It will be some time yet
before Africa evolves an internally driven robust human rights regime,
effectively weakening sovereignty between states.

In addition to history, a key impediment to this evolution is western double
standards. America ignores Uzbekistan's poor human rights record and
Russia's atrocities in Chechnya because they are allies in its "war on
terror", but imposes targeted sanctions on Zimbabwe. Britain boycotts
cricket tours of Zimbabwe because of its poor human rights record, but
remains silent when its cricket team tours Pakistan, which is also a grave
human rights violator. The EU condemns Mugabe's human rights abuses
forthrightly, but is muted about America's human rights abuses in Guantánamo
Bay.

It is also unhelpful that Zimbabwe has been singled out for condemnation
while a blind eye is turned to other undemocratic states such as Angola,
Nigeria, Gabon, Swaziland, Ethiopia, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea and Uganda.

The west's failure to apply human rights standards evenly results in
stauncher claims to sovereignty in Africa. The danger lies in the fact that
some of these claims are pretexts for internal repression. The west can aid
Africa's evolution from regarding sovereignty as sacrosanct by desisting
from duplicitous international politics.

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