Freedom: human rights and free trade
Thank you very much for inviting me here and giving me the opportunity to speak to you. As you have heard, I have been working as Executive Director of IFLRY from June 1991 until December 1995. I have many fond memories of those years and a lot of the things I learned then, I still use every day. Fortunately, I also still see many of the friends I made in those years. Like me, they have become politicians or party activists.
I also remember from my years in IFLRY how difficult the job of Executive Director can be, working long hours with a shoestring budget and no staff. Anne, good luck to you.
Dear Friends,
I am speaking here as a representative of Liberal International. We are a federation of liberal political parties and in fact many of your mother parties belong to Liberal International. "The Global Village" has become a bit of a cliché, but the world is undeniably becoming more international. An increasing number of political issues has an international dimension: environment, crime, defence, trade and economy. The list goes on and on.
Corporations have successfully organised themselves to operate in an international marketplace. Governments have organised themselves internationally, just think about the European Union, Mercosur and NAFTA. It is essential that political parties are not left behind. Political parties have a role to play on the international arena and that is where Liberal International comes in.
Four weeks ago Liberal International had its Congress in Ottawa, Canada and we discussed free trade. Mike Moore, the Director General of the World Trade Organisation was present there. In February we will be meeting with Mary Robinson, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, together with the other political internationals. It is with events and meetings like these that we seek to influence what happens on the world stage as well as forming liberal opinion.
Dear Friends,
Liberal International tries to focus its activities on a limited number of issues, in order to have more impact. One of these is human rights. Since the beginning of this month we have employed a Human Rights Project Officer, with the support of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy. This will give us the ability to campaign and lobby and to do research on a scale that was unimaginable before.
Human Rights continues to be an important issue. On this continent we have seen the recent election in Zimbabwe, where people were beaten and even raped and murdered for belonging to the wrong party. Every day we see images from violence and death in the Middle East. In Burma and Malaysia liberal politicians are in prison for being just that: liberal politicians. The People's Republic of China executed 3000 people last year, most without a decent trial or a possibility for appeal. Cuba still prevents its citizens from attending Liberal International events.
Let me make one clear and simple statement here: Human Rights are inalienable, indivisible and universal.
Inalienable because they are not a privilege to be granted or taken away. We are all born with rights and no government can take them away.
Indivisible because human rights is not a pick-and-mix thing. Every individual is entitled to all basic rights as laid down in the relevant international treaties. No government can decide for its citizens which rights should apply and which ones not.
Universal because an Asian in prison longs for freedom as much as a European would. An African in the hands of a torturer suffers as much as a North American would. There can be no excuse for not granting all human rights to every citizen. There is no such thing as "Asian values" that allows the Communist Party of China to crush a peaceful demonstration on Tiananmen square. There is no such thing as an "African model" that allows Mugabe to have young women raped because their boyfriends support the Movement for Democratic Change.
So I repeat: Human Rights are inalienable, indivisible and universal.
Dear Friends,
Another pillar of Liberal International's politics is economic freedom and more particularly: free trade. Today free trade and globalisation are under attack. An odd-ball coalition of trade unionists, protectionists, anarchists and neo-nazis travelled to Seattle last year and Prague this year to attack the very concept of open borders.
World trade last year amounted to 6.6 billion US dollars. That's 66, followed by eleven zeros or about 50 times the gross domestic product of this country, South Africa. Can you imagine how many jobs depend on that? How many companies throughout the world would not survive without? How many states would be worse of without this trade?
The World Bank has calculated that giving the poorest countries of the world, most of them in Africa, unfortunately, free access to Western markets would bring them much more net income than all the billions in development aid they get now. Fortunately, there have been some moves in both the United States and the European Union in the right directions. We should work to continue this and also to ensure that protectionism between less developed countries ends.
I want to say a word about social and environmental conditions to trade. Indian parents send their children to the mines and the factories because that is the only way for their to feed their families. Trade sanctions will only push these families further into poverty that worsens the problem rather than solving it. We need to bring economic development to those countries and the way to do that is through trade.
Free trade is not a zero-sum game. One country's gain is not another country's loss. In a world where global trade is free all parties will benefit. Trade will be able to bring the lasting economic development that aid has been unable to bring.
So should we allow the trade unions to stop these global processes for protectionist motives? Should we allow the anarchists and their Molotov cocktails to hold back progress? Should we go back to a world of closed borders where foreigners are the enemy and anything foreign is kept at a distance?
The answer can only be an unambiguous "no". Liberal International speaks up for free trade and open borders. Liberal International will fight for the benefits that economic liberalisation has brought so many of us.
At the same time, we need to help the weaker economies to make the most of economic liberalisation. That means continuing development aid but focussing it more on those things that really matter for sustainable and long term development: democracy, good governance, the fight against corruption, infrastructure, education and debt relief. It means helping developing countries to open their borders, to liberalise their markets and to prepare their citizens and their companies for the global market place.
Dear Friends,
The politics of Liberal International are based firmly on these two pillars: human rights and economic freedoms. I can even put it in one word: Freedom. Liberal International will continue to work for that Freedom, Freedom that is rightfully yours and mine, Freedom that should be extended to every inhabitant of this global village.
I believe Freedom is a goal we share, and I count on your continued cooperation in working towards it.
Thank you for your attention.
Speech at the Occasion of the Congress of the International Federation of Liberal and Radical Youth, Cape Town, South Africa, 26 November 2000.
