Many development and humanitarian NGOs already regard their human rights brethren with a degree of exasperation for their no-compromise stance on Darfur and Northern Uganda – where their successful push for International Criminal Court referrals in each case made life much harder for agencies trying to negotiate ceasefires or deliver help to people, without producing any obvious results in terms of conflict resolution or bringing baddies to justice. Having watched Human Rights Watch’s manoueverings on Burma over the weekend, I can see their point.
On Friday, HRW sallied forth for some incandescent briefing against Ban Ki-moon after Ban reportedly told General Than Shwe, the head of the ruling junta, that “I appreciate your commitment to moving your country forward”. Cue the following response from HRW in the Guardian:
“That is absolute nonsense,” said Brad Adams, a Burma specialist at Human Rights Watch. “It’s just what we implored him not to say, to make these diplomatic gaffes. Than Shwe has steadily moved his country backwards.”
Then, over the weekend, Ban toughened up his line substantially. During a speech to 500 officials, diplomats and opposition politicians in Rangoon, he castigated the regime for refusing to allow him to meet with Aung San Suu Kyi, saying it had “missed a very important opportunity” ahead of next year’s elections, in that
“allowing a visit to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi would have been an important symbol of the government’s willingness to embark on the kind of meaningful engagement that will be essential if the elections in 2010 are to be seen as credible”.
“I am deeply disappointed,” Ban concluded. So how did HRW react to the regime’s rebuff and to Ban’s tougher line? Here’s the FT this morning:
“None of it was a surprise; his disappointment was almost a foregone conclusion,” said David Mathieson, a Burma researcher for Human Rights Watch. “It’s them saying, ‘We are going ahead with what we want to do and we don’t care what you think about it. The idea that you can come here and fix everything the west wants – forget it.'”
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, seems to be the line coming from HRW HQ – but then, it’s a pleasantly straightforward messaging strategy to sit on the sidelines and accuse anyone who tries to engage with the regime of being a sell-out (and no doubt it plays well with HRW’s members in these tough fundraising times).
For a more nuanced take on the issue, try Saturday’s Asia Times – which has an excellent interview with Thant Myint-U, a former head of policy planning at the UN Department of Political Affairs. His take: sanctions and isolation have been disastrous, and instead the international community should shift to a posture of “debate, engagement and gradualism”. As he points out, there’s more to Burma than the democracy issue: in particular, the need for peacebuilding (“Burma is only now emerging from six decades of continuous armed conflict”), and poverty reduction – where he comments,
“I can’t imagine that any democratic transition will be sustainable unless it happens at the same time as major progress in turning around the economy – yet here again, there is almost no international attention, though so much more could be done.”
Why’s that, you wonder? Answer: because aid donors understand perfectly well that if they scale up their development assistance to Burma, they’ll come in for the same treatment from the human rights lobby as Ban Ki-moon received over the weekend.
