SYNERGISING THE PROMOTION AND PROTECTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN WEST AFRICA

A paper presented at the Annual General Assembly of the Network of National Human Rights Institutions (NNHRI) of West Africa – 2011.
By Sulemana Braimah, Deputy Executive Director – Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA)

Introduction

Human rights have become universally accepted as those basic and fundamental rights and freedoms that all people are entitled to, regardless of nationality, race, colour, sex, ethnic origin, religion, or creed . Fundamentally, human rights are and ought to be universal and egalitarian. Thus, regardless of the inevitable socio-cultural differences, all human beings must enjoy such rights equally just by virtue of being human.

The significance of human rights and their centrality to the quest for global development are well known. As noted by Beitz (2009) if the public deliberations in a peaceful global society can be said to have a common moral language, it is that of human rights. Indeed, their dominance and emphasis in various international and regional declarations, conventions and protocols, are a manifestation of how human rights are widely considered as constituting a fundamental pre-requite for human and global progress.

At the ECOWAS level, the importance of human rights to the region’s social economic and political development has been fully recognised. The ECOWAS Protocol on Democracy and Good Governance, and almost all protocols of the regional group make reference to human rights as a critical factor for the development of the region generally, and specifically for the progress of democracy and good governance.

There is, therefore, enough evidence of a long-standing commitment towards human rights by our leaders. However, pledges to promote and protect the rights of citizens had until recently, largely remained mere declarations contained in diplomatic documents the contents of which were known to a limited number of highly-placed persons citizens. For many, the regional protocols and declarations related to human rights were just mere diplomatic symbolisms.

Thankfully, there has been a gradual shift from just making declarations and signing protocols, to the actualisation and implementation of such human rights instruments. Indeed, there have been increasing and concerted efforts to promote and protect human rights in the region in recent times than ever before. The establishment and workings of the Network of National Human Rights Institutions (NNHRI) is a manifestation of the new resolve and dedication to actualise what had hitherto been mere paper commitments.


The challenge to Synergising Human Rights Promotion and Protection: Universalism of Rights vs. Relativities

Despite the pledges by our leaders and the current accelerated efforts to promote and protect human rights in West Africa, several citizens continue to suffer repression and limitations to their fundamental freedoms.

The challenge to the promotion and protection of human rights in the region is not a lack of recognition of the importance of such rights or the absence of guiding instruments for promoting and protecting them. At least, each of our countries has signed and/or ratified several human rights instruments and also, national constitutions of the various countries have elaborate provisions that seek to promote and protect the rights of citizens.

The major challenge is that, the apparent consensus on the universality of human rights and the international standards applied to such rights, often do not recognise national socio-cultural and ideological relativities. Such relativities, however, continue to be a serious constraining factor militating against both the efforts at promoting and protecting human rights, and attempts to synergise those efforts at the regional level. This is because, several people including some of the region’s leaders, hold the view that the concept of human rights is fundamentally rooted in westernisation and thus, cannot be universally applicable in all countries.

The challenge of accepting human rights as universal values is not recent and not limited only to West Africa. For example, in 1981, the Iranian representative to the United Nations, Said Rajaie-Khorassani, articulated the position of his country regarding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), by arguing that the Declaration was merely a secular understanding of the Judeo-Christian tradition, the implementation of which trespasses Islamic jurisprudence (Littman, 1999) .

Similarly, former Prime Ministers of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew and his Malaysian counterpart, Mahathir bin Mohamad, had both argued in the 1990s that the westernised perspectives on human rights as contained in the UDHR were significantly different from Asian values. They suggested at the time that, Asian values entailed a sense of loyalty and foregoing personal freedoms for the sake of social stability and prosperity and, therefore, authoritarian governance was more appropriate in Asia than democracy.

These relativistic interpretations of human rights and the challenges posed by such interpretations to the effective promotion and protection of human rights have been monumental. Such interpretations have and will continue to constrain efforts at synergising the promotion and protection of human rights in West Africa. Indeed, at the national levels, such interpretations have led some regimes to (usually in their own interest) consider some universally acclaimed rights as culturally alien, ideologically inappropriate, religiously abominable, or unrealistic for national security reasons.

The situation, therefore, calls for a shift from the current practice of adopting protocols and declarations which recognise human rights as egalitarian rights and yet leaving implementation of such rights solely to individual nation states. The current practice, if continued, will only perpetuate the major challenge of having to deal with the persistent paradox of socio-cultural and political distinctiveness of individual countries versus the promotion and protection of human right as universal rights.

Attempts by individual nations to deal with the contradiction have often culminated in selective implementation, interpretation and compliance of the letter and spirit of various human rights instruments, and the ultimate sacrifice of the true values of human rights as universal rights.


Why the Need for Synergy

If human rights are to be effectively promoted and protected as universal rights and freedoms in West Africa, such efforts must be based on collective interest on the part of our countries and citizens, and a synergistic pursuit of those efforts as a regional (not country-specific) development step. Again, such efforts, should be rooted in the willingness to pull strengths together in pursuit of a common goal, and must be imbued with a sense of communal responsibility.

The effective promotion and protection of human rights in the region requires an approach that recognises both the relative socio-cultural differences of countries and the need to innovatively universalise the enhancement of such rights. Such an approach ought to make it possible to circumvent current restrictions on human rights posed by the usually self-imposed but non-progressive political, cultural, religious or economic exigencies of individual countries.

It is also important to point out that attempts to have the ECOWAS and its institutions like the Community Court of Justice serve as arbiters in safeguarding the promotion and protection of human rights will not be plausible without a corresponding full commitment by member states to encourage and support each other in the process.

As noted by An-Na'im (2001) , the need for countries to begin to synergise the promotion and protection of human rights is particularly crucial in view of the considerable disparities in the degree of political will, institutional capacity at the national levels, and differences in material resources among countries. Such differences may sometimes genuinely constrain the promotion and protection of human rights by some countries and can only be mitigated if there is a joint effort among countries to promote and protect those rights.

Essential Requirements for Synergising Human Rights Protection and Promotion in W/A

1. True and honest political will and commitment by all countries to prioritise the promotion and protection of human rights in line with the Protocol on Democracy and Good Governance.

2. Strengthening of the NNHRI: The establishment of the Network is definitely a critical step towards a regional and collective effort to promote and protect human rights. It must, however, be emphasised that its establishment is just the first step. What is critically important is resourcing it and having the needed co-operation and support by member states.

3. Strengthening of the national human rights institutions: The effectiveness of the NNHRI and the success of any attempts to synergise the promotion and protection of human rights in the region will largely depend on the effectiveness of the national institutions. For a number of countries, the establishment of Human Rights Commissions or bodies was just for the purpose of meeting a constitutional requirement. Most, (if not all) national human rights institutions are not well resourced to enable them fully and effectively discharge their mandates. It is important for existing human rights Commissions to be strengthened and for countries that don’t have such Commissions yet to establish one.

4. Citizens’ involvement: The promotion and protection of human rights at both the national and regional levels cannot be successful if citizens who are the beneficiaries of those efforts are not integrated in the process. Rights holders must know their rights, the mechanisms for them to demand and assert those rights, and duty-bearers must know their responsibilities and limits. There is, therefore, a critical need for a collective and renewed resolve to enhance public education and sensitization on human rights across the region.

5. Vibrant, Pluralistic & Professional Media: Linked to the requirement of citizens’ involvement and education is the need for a vibrant, pluralistic and professional media. Meeting this requirement demands the fulfilment of a number of conditions:

• Decriminalisation of media laws and guarantee of media freedom
• Accelerating the processes for the adoption and ratification of the ECOWAS standard regional framework on media legislation and freedom of expression
• Full implementation of Article 37 of the Supplementary Protocol on Democracy and Good Governance by all member countries
• National support and commitment to enhance media professional standards

6. Rights-enhancing legislation: Citizens my know their rights but may be constrained in asserting those rights if existing pieces of legislation limits opportunities or prevent citizens from asserting those rights. Synergistic pursuit of human rights promotion and protection cannot be achieved if some countries continue to maintain laws that constrict human rights in their statute books. It is thus crucial to embark on region-wide crusade for the adoption and passage of Access to Information Legislation by all countries. Human rights cannot be enhanced when citizens are not well informed about their rights and they cannot be well informed if they don’t have the basic right of having access to information they require. Liberia needs to commend for being the first to have a Freedom of Information (FoI) Law and also Nigeria for being the second and currently the last to pass a FoI legislation.

7. There also the need for active and vibrant human rights-centred civil society organisations


Conclusion

What is obvious is that addressing the apparent disparities in the human rights conditions in the region requires the mobilization and use of political will by all countries.
The important requirement for meeting the core principles and gaining the maximum value of human rights shall continue to be their universal recognition. If fundamental rights are universal and egalitarian, their interpretation, implementation and enforcement should logically be broad-based and collective.
The critical need for synergising the promotion and protection of human rights in the region must have informed the formulation of Article 35 (2) of ECOWAS’ Supplementary Protocol on Democracy and Good Governance where it is stated inter alia, that independent national human rights institution “shall be organised into a regional network.”

The establishment of NNHRI in line with the demands of the Supplementary Protocol is a clear acknowledgement of the need to promote and protect human rights in the region. But more importantly, it demonstrates the unwavering determination to harmonise and synergise efforts to promote and protect human rights as a region (rather than as countries) in line with the positive resolve and vision to have an ECOWAS of citizens rather than of nations.