Susan Ariel Aaronson, Ph.D. is the author (with Jamie Zimmerman) of Righting Trade: Public Policies at the Intersection of Trade and Human Rights (forthcoming Cambridge University Press).
In 2000, leaders of 191 very different nations put forth a far-reaching proposition—the Millennium Development Goals. These men and women agreed to collaborate to reduce global poverty 50 percent by 2015 as well as improve health, promote peace and advance human rights and environmental sustainability. The Millennium Development Goals also reflected a new approach to global governance and international cooperation—one which the U.S., with new congressional leadership, can truly advance.
The leaders agreed that poverty, whether in the industrialized world or in the developing world, is not simply the absence of money, but is a lack of access to resources and opportunities. Thus, poverty is a human rights as well as a development problem. In order to successfully reduce poverty, the leaders committed to coordinate their human rights, development and trade policies at both the national and international levels. In short, they agreed to make policy coherence a priority.
Such a coordinated approach is in the interest of citizens of the developing world, as well as taxpayers in the industrialized world. Human rights, governance and development are intertwined. When policymakers promote equity (human rights policies designed to ensure equality of opportunity and, to the extent possible, avoid extreme inequalities in outcomes) they contribute both to development and economic growth. Moreover, when policymakers in the industrialized world mainstream human rights into their development policies, they are ensuring that their human rights, development and trade strategies are consistent and cost-effective.
In the heady days that followed the Millennium Declaration, many officials seemed keen to ensure that trade liberalization was a central component of this coherence recipe. In 2001, the members of the World Trade Organization agreed to focus a new round of trade talks on the needs of developing countries. The Doha Development Round was supposed to ensure that citizens in the developing world, especially the poorest, could reap the benefits of global markets. At first, that promise seemed attainable. In Monterrey, Mexico, in 2002, industrialized and developing countries redefined development as a mutual responsibility. Developing countries agreed to put in place sound economic policies and good governance, tackle corruption, and invest in their people. Meanwhile, industrialized countries agreed to provide more funding for development, reduce trade barriers that harm the world’s poor and foster a trade capacity-building partnership.
But while world leaders made progress on developing coherence between human rights and development policies, they struggled to achieve consistency between those policies and trade liberalization. The U.S. and the EU insisted that developing countries focus on agriculture and also make commitments in sectors such as services. Not surprisingly, the leaders of many developing countries grew increasingly frustrated with the focus on industrialized-country demands. After some two years of fits and starts, WTO Director General Pascal Lamy suspended the round in July 2006. He noted that it is “now obvious that the costs of failure, and the missed opportunity to rebalance the trading system, would hurt developing countries more than others.”
Some might argue that in the absence of trade talks, coherence between human rights, development and trade is unattainable. But this is an opportunity for the new leaders in Congress to reassert American leadership to bring that about. Many of the newly elected Democrats are deeply concerned about the impact of trade liberalization on the economic futures of their constituents. Thus, these men and women are often portrayed as “protectionists.” But growing numbers of these leaders also recognize that protectionism is at best a stopgap measure; it cannot help local officials attract job-creating investment.
This is what a coherent approach to human rights, development and trade means: First, U.S. and EU policymakers would acknowledge that they have human rights responsibilities. Second, the policymakers must find more cost-effective ways to coordinate these important objectives. Third, they must set up an infrastructure to achieve such coordination. Right now, the U.S. examines the environmental and labor rights impact of proposed trade agreements. Congress should add to any fast-track approval of trade deals a requirement that the U.S. Trade Representative examine the impact of proposed trade agreements on basic human rights such as access to medicines, basic services and education. Finally, human rights advocates, development advocates and proponents for trade tend to work in separate spheres. They speak different languages, lobby different agencies and Congressional committees, and have different policy priorities. But a more coherent approach means that advocates and policymakers will weigh trade, development, and capacity building policies with an eye to whether or not these approaches advance opportunities for the poor at home and abroad.
If global leaders, and in particular U.S. policymakers are serious about reducing poverty, they are really advocating linking efforts to provide the world’s poor with the public goods and the human rights protection that many governments have been unable or unwilling to supply. They are talking about encouraging developing countries as well as local officials to invest in the skills and resources citizens need to become productive members of society. In coherence lies opportunity.
