An Appeal to the World Bank to Support Democracy: “When Politics Corrupts Money” a New York Times Op-Ed

A complaint that is often lodged against international financial institutions is that they provide assistance without significant attention to issues of human rights and democracy In an Op-Ed published on June 16, 2004 in the New York Times by Nobel Prize winner Shirin Ebadi and Amir Attaran, entitled “When Politics Corrupts Money,” the authors charge that international economic institutions need to exclude dictatorships from their programs and give priority to democratic governments when determining who gets economic assistance. The authors argue, there is a limited supply of World Bank loan money. Given the finite resources available and the many needy countries it is imperative that priority be given to assist struggling democracies with better chances of success. Here are some excerpts from their Op-Ed

“The World Bank, which provided $18.5 billion in aid in 2003, should withhold money from governments that are antidemocratic, or that violate their people's human rights. To lend money to tyrants is to strengthen them and to become complicit when they stamp on their people's rights. To lend money to one-party states is to lock in their hegemony, and to ridicule the dignity of people outside the party. To lend money to well-kept dictators is to enslave their citizenry, who even after the dictator is gone must repay principal and interest — to the bank.”

“…however much money the bank lends to oppressive governments (and that is plenty), there are enough poverty-stricken democracies that would gladly have it instead.”

“Instead, the bank should devise a kind of human rights scorecard. At a minimum, it should include the civil freedoms (of expression, of the press, of women) and the social and economic freedoms (access to health, education and property). The bank should monitor these freedoms and refuse to aid any country that violates them.”

“By using a scorecard like this, the bank would show that governments that exclude civic participation in politics are not legitimate borrowers in their people's interest, because the people have no say. Using the scorecard would also harness the inspirational power of human rights to rekindle fading interest in the bank's work. And, not incidentally, it would probably be the most benign form of conditionality ever applied by the bank.”

“The bank's pragmatists point out that, under its charter, "only economic considerations shall be relevant" to lending decisions. But this argument proves nothing. If the leadership and governance of a prospective debtor are relevant considerations for a commercial bank, then surely they are important to the World Bank. Even if democratic economies do not always outperform oppressive ones, they are safer risks. As a report of the United Nations Development Program noted last year, ‘no democracy has ever performed as badly as the worst dictatorships.’"