June 2000 Fraser Forum:
Lydia Miljan
The promotion of human rights is one of those issues that most people favour in principle, but about which only a few of us are passionate enough to become involved in directly. The media often tell us about remote regions of the world where human rights abuses abound. But apart from those reports, most of us do not concern ourselves with the subject. We may even think of human rights as a fringe issue; we sometimes see zealous proponents marching in protests.
One reason for this perception could be the lack of media attention to the issue. Considering the magnitude of human rights abuses around the world, during 1999, both CBC and CTV aired a relatively small number of stories on human rights (CBC, 61; CTV, 39 stories). The majority of these stories appeared in the flagship newscasts of CBC's "National" and the "CTV News," where the reports briefly described a particular human rights abuse and showed commentators denouncing the offending regime. The report by Alan Fryer for "CTV News" on September 12, 1999, is typical: "As the politicians huddle to work out the details, the capital of East Timor is burning and reports continue to suggest the slaughter is not slowing down." This account was followed by several eye witnesses describing the violence. Then, Mary Robinson, the UN Human Rights Commissioner, made the following statement: "And it is not only a case of gross, blatant, terrible violence of the human rights of a people - it has been done in the uniform of a government."
By design, these stories can only describe the event. Only the interview programs, such as the "National Magazine," "Canada AM," and "Sunday Edition" provide the debate and context of these events. As Figure 1 shows, the public affairs program that provided the most debate about the causes and solutions to human rights was the "National Magazine," with 32 segments. CTV's "Canada AM" followed far behind with only 8 segments, and CTV's "Sunday Edition" with 4.
On these stories on human rights, when talk came to solutions, the focus was on the use of sanctions. For the most part, arguments favouring the imposition of sanctions slightly outnumbered those against on CBC, and were twice as likely to do so on CTV. For example, on CBC's "National Magazine" on September 9, 1999, host Brian Stewart in an interview with Lloyd Axworthy on East Timor asked, "But Minister, many people will doubt Canada's willingness to be really forceful on this because of our trade relations with Indonesia, which we've worked very hard on, over the years, to build up. I mean, are you prepared to even consider sanctions - an embargo - here?"
Only in the coverage of China was the ethics of trade debated. In this instance, journalists and panelists pointed to the often-contradictory policies of Western governments who have imposed sanctions against some human-rights-abusive governments but not others. On the April 18, 1999, "Sunday Edition," Jennifer Wells of the Globe and Mail's Report on Business discussed the American policy on China: "I think what's key in all of this is that if anything should be tied to human rights, it is trade. Trade is definitely a big carrot that Clinton now holds and that the world now holds. China desperately wants in. And the US administration has tried in the past to sort of link human rights to trade, and I think that that's what has to happen here. And it's key and the Clinton administration could take a lead on that." Host Deidre McMurdy turned to her other guest, Rod McQueen, senior writer of the National Post and posed this followup question, "But Rod, how relevant are human rights issues in global trade? I mean, we're doing business with Indonesia and lots of other countries that violate human rights."
On the issue of human rights, what the media did not discuss was the empirical evidence about how best to promote freedom and democracy. What follows in this issue of Fraser Forum are three articles that are based on longer papers by notable experts in the field. In "Democracy and the Rule of Law," Harvard economist Robert Barro notes that democracy typically arises when countries become richer. More important, a country's economic prosperity is what ensures its stability. Political institutions in and of themselves do not provide stable politics. Sanctions, the solutions often preferred by national television news reporters, do not achieve their stated goals and often harm those they intent to help. In his article, "Sanctions and How They Don't Work" economist Ernest Preeg illustrates that the policies of isolation have had nearly a complete lack of success in achieving human rights and democracy. He also documents how sanctions have had adverse consequences in both the targeted country and in the country that imposes them. David Cortright, Fellow of the Indiana-based Fourth Freedom Forum, makes the case in "Positive Inducements in International Statecraft" that, rather than sanctions, an incentive-based strategy provides a greater positive impact. He notes that incentives foster cooperation and good will where coercion creates hostility and separation. (For those interested readers, the complete, full-length version of each of these three papers is available on our web site, www.fraserinstitute.ca>
In addition to these articles, contributor Michael Walker provides the empirical evidence from The Fraser Institute's economic freedom index calculations on the statistical link between economic prosperity and political freedom. Dexter Samida relates how governments, and not corporations, have historically exacerbated civil wars around the world. John Robson, meanwhile, explains how freedom and civil society relate to these issues.
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