From His Royal Highness Prince El Hassan bin Talal
The World Justice Project
THE MENA RULE OF LAW CONFERENCE 2010:
The Road to Justice in MENA: National, International and Traditional Justice Systems Working Together
25th-26th June, 2010
Al Akhawayn University
Ifrance, Morocco
WEST ASIA-NORTH AFRICA REGION
We come from a region that is marked by more insecurity than most. We face all kinds of threats, resulting from unresolved conflicts over Territoriality, Identity and Movement (Migration) (TIM)[1] to worsening politico/economic situations leading to poverty and unemployment. Whereas a democratic process based on political pluralism can deter extremist ideologies seeking to undermine the rule of law. The hatred industry is doing too well in terms of the widespread escalation of conventional military hardware and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. I refer here to the alternate polities of governance and the support offered to dispossessed youth. In less than decade, over half of Middle East’s population will be under 18 and the World Bank reports the need for 100 million job opportunities by 2025. This can lead to two polar options: either we risk the formation of a disaffected bloc of society, or we have an entire generation ripe for radicalization and extremism.
Regional and trans-national sources of instability in the region include repressive authoritarian and or military-controlled governments; lack of a rule of law; human rights violations; refugees and migration (biggest refugee population in the world); high population growth rate; religious divisions; ethnic/racial divisions; excessive military spending; excessive arms imports; proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; proliferation of ballistic missiles; transfer of advanced conventional weapons and technologies; border disputes; mismanagement of the agriculture sector; desertification; water issues and problems; labour migration; excessive state sector/government control of economy; over-reliance on oil and gas sectors; over-reliance on non-productive service sectors; excessive government employment/false jobs; structural and disguised unemployment; international/regional terrorism; international drug trafficking and international crime.
The Helsinki Process of 1975 talked about economics, humanitarian and security issues. The Multilaterals of 1992 discussed economics, security and humanitarian issues mainly in reference to the refugee question. The Barcelona Process of 1995 discussed economics (financial), political, security, humanitarian including culture and social issues. For me, culture is security and multiple identity is security. Pluralism is security and democracy cannot be built without the respect for the other.
In the last twenty years, a number of initiatives have been developed to bring about a state of common understanding on a group of issues among regional parties. Lack of those regional parties to develop a regional code of conduct promoted the creation of a number of multilateral initiatives with a set of common discussion issues so as to increase participation. The result was the creation of competition among these initiatives rather than achieving common objectives.
LOSS OF OPPORTUNITIES
There has been an estimated 12 trillion US dollars in lost opportunities since Madrid and Oslo. This means that from 1991-2010 every citizen has lost. An average Saudi, Palestinian, Lebanese and Israeli would have enjoyed double the income level, whereas an average Iraqi would have been four times richer. (Strategic Foresight Group – Cost of Conflict in the Middle East.)
Such waste is difficult to comprehend. But add to this the fact that billions of dollars have been spent on armaments then the region’s path to economic stagnation becomes easier to retrace. Little has been done to reverse a process in which technological development, rapid social change and globalisation are disenfranchising large sections of our societies. They have spent on arms rather than investing in people. Today, we are living with the consequences.
MAD/MAS
The fragmented region is the most populous and most dangerous zone in the world. In the West Bank, 50-60% of people are below the poverty line: two dollars a day and as many as 80% in Gaza. More than fifty percent of Iraqi women are illiterate. Some 6.5 million Iraqis are dependent on rations to meet their nutritional needs. Large percentages of children in both Iraq and Gaza suffer from anaemia. Ten million landmines and explosive remnants of war in northern Iraq will take up to 15 years to clear. This continuing Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), whether through conventional means or terrorist action, is a scenario that unfolds where the Middle East may indeed become a ‘black hole’. We see the dismembering of the whole region into disparate groups. 2008 heralded the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This should have prompted us to develop a consensus for Mutually Assured Survival (MAS). Talking of human rights – neither clean drinking water nor clean air are perceived as human rights. Two million children die each year for want of a glass of clean drinking water and adequate sanitation. (Arab Development Report 2006.)
Democracy, Rule of Law and Human Rights (Bassiouni)
- Democracy in any of its meanings, requires the existence and free exercise of certain basic individual and group rights without which no democracy, however perceived, can exist. Basic rights: life, liberty, property, due process of law equality; non-discrimination, freedom of expression and assembly, and, judicial access and review. These rights are all contained in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Social Economic and Cultural Rights and other human rights instruments, norms and standards.
- The linkage between democracy, human rights and the rule of law was evidenced in the Charter of Paris for a New Europe (Nov. 21, 1991)
- Vienna Declaration on Human Rights states: “Democracy, development and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms are interdependent and mutually reinforcing… The international community should support the strengthening and formation of democracy, development and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms in the entire world”.
PRAHALAD
C.K. Prahalad more rosily opines, “Four billion poor can be the engine of the next round of global trade and prosperity.”
INDEPENDENT COMMISSION ON INTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIAN ISSUES
In the early 1980s, I worked with Robert McNamara on the Independent Commission on International Humanitarian Issues[2]. We produced a Sectoral Report entitled Modern Wars: The Humanitarian Challenge[3]. In the Report, McNamara noted, “how critical it was not just to resolve the overall armaments problem but, above all, to ensure human survival and safeguarding human welfare and development”.
The same Commission launched a call for a New International Humanitarian Order. This had led, in turn, to the call for a codification of the fundamental rights of humanity by the Swedish Government and for an institutionalisation of mechanisms to guarantee Human Security by the Canadians and the Norwegians[4]. In addition, the UNHCHR is concerned with developing a Racial Equality Index[5]. But all of this leads nowhere unless the actions we agree to and the codes of conduct we develop behind closed doors, are accepted by the entire community of states. If we are to develop a societal dynamic with a functioning system of institutions, and an international system of decision-making bodies, then we must evolve from unilateral to multilateral actions. Only then can a cornerstone of a humanitarian order and a law of peace be put in place.
SECURITY
- The need for a CSCME
- To ensure security for the Middle East, we must apply common standards and work towards a peace that is acceptable to all. The Japanese Diet, in 1988, stated that there can be no stability for the oil states unless there is stability for the hinterland. This hinterland is facing some grave challenges.
- Collective security – breakdown of security and breakdown of dialogue. Look at collective security package whether in legislative or judiciary form – law of peace; culture of compliance
- Cannot develop civil society without collective security and cannot develop collective security without good governance and dialogue. Dialogue means that you don’t accept the monopoly of threat by either security officials or, for example, Islamists.
ECONOMIC COUNCIL AND SOCIAL COUNCIL
We talk of an Economic and Social Council. Do we not need an Economic Council to attend to the economic chaos in the world in which we live in today to humanise the goals of economic policies and not politics? Do we not need a Social Council to focus on the legal empowerment of the poor to focus on societies in transition, and to focus on making stakeholders out of people who today do not know their rights or their responsibilities?
The United Nations Charter came out of the chaos and devastation of two world wars in 1945. Do we have to wait for another devastating world war to talk about a renewal of collective, convivial international will for change?
INTER-REGIONAL AND INTRA-INDEPENDENT CONCEPTS
A community of water and energy for the human environment – to focus on the creation of an integrated system of sustainable energy and water production and distribution, to enhance stability and to restore justice to development.
TREC – Gaza Proposal – a Solar Water&Power Source in Egypt for Gaza – a project for recovery of Gaza, and regional conflict resolution.
CITIZENS CHARTER/ SOCIAL CHARTER
- Asian Monetary Fund with Asian drawing rights
- Paul Volcker’s asymmetric approach to the development of a Middle East Development Bank
- Teams that could develop an understanding of social realities actually to develop an understanding of what we then called citizens’ advice bureau – the need to create it building on the British model
- competitive parallel policy of slogans and ideologies is taking over in poor areas
OTHER POINTS
- Regional database based on empirical facts
- There must be standards shared and enforced by companies and governments – ethical standards as well
- There is the problem of neighbours not knowing each other. Walls between rich and poor, Muslim and Christian, etc.
- No collective vision of stabilising the region: amenagement des térritoires. Not personalised, not my territoire or your territoire, but all the territoires, within the context of the three G’s Geography, Geology and Geophysics and within the context of natural human and economic resources; alternative energy as a whole; alternative water as a whole.
- Look into Islamic economics – estimated USD800 billion in French and American banks
- Mosques and churches can be used to help
CONFIDENCE BUILDING IS ESSENTIAL
Prior to the commencement of negotiations, such measures as the bilateral release of detained people, the removal of checkpoints or Mahsums, free access to places of worship in Jerusalem and refraining from violence on both sides, are examples of confidence-building measures that can be implemented. Specific measures should be developed; some should apply immediately and others throughout the course of the negotiations as means to implement any agreement reached. Respect for human life and for people’s dignity is essential to confidence building, as is the primacy of rule of law and stability. There is a need for international support to establish a legal system and the rule of law in Palestine as a way of insuring its future stability, paving the way to democracy, encouraging foreign investments and economic development and guaranteeing the existence of a peaceful, secular and democratic state.
We, in the Middle East-West Asian-North Africa region, are at the end of our tether. More than ever there is a desperate need for recognition of the rule of law. Vladimir Putin talks of “dictatorship of the law – that the law should dictate and limit the power of the State”[6]. Today we see more dictatorship of power and militarism than of law. There should be no double standards. There is an urgent need for a regional conference to be prepared by wise heads away from the propaganda and the publicity. Human rights are the first casualties of war and the degradation of human dignity in our region has undone generations of agreement and convention on the rights of civilians to protection and wellbeing.
Development must be built from the bottom up. We need to empower the powerless and create an enabling environment for civil society advocacy. (LEOP – Property Rights, Labour Rights, Business Rights and Access to Justice).
The right to speak, to express one’s difference, to innovate, to create and to publish one’s findings, will remain but an illusion so long as we have not ensured respect for human rights and for the rule of law.
Thank you.
NOTE ON COMMISSION ON THE LEGAL EMPOWERMENT OF THE POOR
The four pillars of a comprehensive agenda for legal empowerment of the poor are: Property Rights, Labour Rights, Business Rights and Access to Justice. The 4 pillars recognize the imperatives of promoting and protecting key livelihood rights but also the potential of the poor to break the vicious cycle of poverty.
In terms of a way forward, the Report emphasizes:
- the importance of ensuring that there are a sufficient number of both adequate and equitable justice mechanisms, and that they are accessible to, and affordable for, the poor and acceptable in terms of cost and quality;
- the promotion of inclusive and pro-poor property rights system, ensuring equitable and sustainable access to land and other natural resources, taking into account the imperatives of food security and sustainable livelihood;
- the promotion of labour rights and rights to self-employment and businesses for sustainable and resilient poverty reduction;
- The report emphasizes that all of the above requires the strengthening of identity, voice, and representation of the poor as well as strengthening the security of contracts and the reduction of transaction costs, especially for those who toil in the informal economy.
[1] Dr. Lothar Brock, Osnabrück, Germany.
[2] Report of the Independent Commission on Humanitarian Issues, 1988
[3] Independent Commission on Independent Humanitarian Issues Sectoral Report: Modern Wars: The Humanitarian Challenge, Zed Books. London/New Jersey. 1986. Other languages: French, Japanese, Russian and Spanish.
[4] Lysøen Declaration, Bergen, Norway,11th May, 1998. http://www.nisat.org/export_laws-regs%20linked/Norway/lysoern.htm.
[5] Racial Equality Index, UNHCHR High Level Panel, 19th September, 2003, http://www.hrea.org/lists/wcar/markup/msg00199.html.
[6] “Engaging with Russia: The Next Phase”, Roderic Lyne, Strobe Talbott and Koji Watanabe – A Report to the Trilateral Commission, 2006