TIP Report

A little late to be posting it here, but the State Department recently released its Trafficking in Persons report. Among the highlights: Forced Child Labor, Child Soldiers, Supply and Demand, and, of course, Involuntary Domestic Servitude in Diplomatic Residences. Of course, there’s more! The full report is available online here. Perfect summer reading.

Our colleague Jennifer Hollinger is spending the summer working with trafficked women in Albania, and will certainly post about her experiences when she returns. In the meantime, you can follow her blog at The Advocacy Project.

Also, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor Jeffrey Krilla is answering questions about the President’s Freedom Agenda online.

And now for something completely different…

Some things never go out of style. Iranian fashion police, from WSJ via Gawker: “It doesn’t take Henry Kissinger to figure out that an attack on fine Italian made-to-measure is an attack on everything we as a civilization hold dear. The time to act is now.”

Please note that the centrality of neckties as barometers of democracy yearning, first seen in Lerner, remains key. For that reason, DP should perhaps consider a redesign of the website theme.

For another eerily Balgat-reminiscent democratic piece: Ruling Party Charms a Turkish City With New Take on Secular Heritage

And We Try to Promote Democracy?

Last Thursday the U.S. House of Representatives voted 241 to 177 on H.R. 1905, a bill that would give the District of Columbia a voting representative in the House, putting the District one step closer to enjoying the full benefits of American democracy.  In the video clip below, the District’s current Delegate to the House, Eleanor Holmes Norton, who can vote in committee but not on the floor, spoke in passionate defense of the bill.  While controversial and even inflamatory at times, Ms. Norton provides one of the best arguments I’ve heard for giving Dictrict residents Congressional representation when she is briefly interrupted by another member. In a speech reminiscent of such fiery American rhetoricians as Samuel Adams and Martin Luther King, Jr., who argued with equal force for equal representation in their own eras, she bases her argument on the fundamental, foundational right of representation we enjoy in this country.

I will not yield, sir.  The District of Columbia has spent 206 years yielding to people who would deny them the vote.  I yield you no ground, not during my time.  You have had your say, and your say has been that you think that the people that live in your capital are not entitled to a vote in their House.  Shame on you.

Congresswoman Norton’s remarks highlight one of the fundamental shortcomings of democracy in this country, and one that severely limits our credibility when we try to promote democracy abroad: that close to 600,000 U.S. citizens are legally disenfranchised because they live within the borders of our capital city.  The U.S. is the only democracy in the world in which citizens of the capital city lack representation in the national legislature.  But here’s the real hypocracy: the Bush administration strives to enshrine the promotion of freedom and democracy as a fundamental pillar of U.S. foreign policy and an important rhetorical justification for the global war on terror, yet they have shown at best a casual indifference toward efforts to secure democratic representation for those disenfranchised American citizens residing in the nation’s capital.

 While I believe promoting democracy is an important tool of U.S. foreign policy (probably for different reasons than many members of the Bush administration, however), with such glaring democratic deficiencies in our own backyard, literally right outside the President’s window, how can we possibly justify the time, effort, and now lives spent fighting for freedom abroad.  In this light, President Bush’s argument in his second inaugural address, that “[t]he best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world,” seems hollow and self-serving rather than principled and magnanimous.  As Americans, we need to take a hard look in the mirror so we know what face we’re presenting to the world when we promote democracy abroad.  Maybe then, we’ll know how silly we can look.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VV3k8nERUOQ]

Misleading Americans One By One…

In this weekend’s Week in Review (4/15/07), Craig S. Smith wrote an article under the heading of “Islam and Democracy” entitled “North Africa: Under Attack, and Relying on Repression”. Aside from the headline, it’s quite sympathetic to North African regimes and oddly evasive when it comes to Islamists. This article is embarrassing; I’m embarrassed to admit enjoying the New York Times. A couple of examples before I get to the main point:

The first sentence refers to “… North Africa’s secular social veneer…” I’m not sure what this means. Secular? In North Africa? Even many of the leftists are not “secular” in North Africa. “Secular” is a curse to most North Africans. While there is a “secular elite”, this phrase only describes a very small fraction of the population. Perhaps particular wealthy districts of wealthy cities have a “secular social veneer”, but this is not an accurate description of the reality across North Africa.

Shortly thereafter, Smith states:

“Every country on the continent’s northern rim, from Egypt to Morocco, has outlawed extreme Islamist parties that would be likely to win large parliamentary blocs — if not majorities — were they allowed to participate in free and fair national elections. (Libya bans political parties altogether.)”

Read the rest of this entry »

Nigerian Elections: Democracy at a Crossroads

Nigerian citizens turned out to vote last week for their regional governors in a much heralded prequel to Saturday’s Presidential election. Unfortunately, those Nigerian voters who expected a free and peaceful election process were disappointed. Reports of widespread fraud have been punctuated by news of violent protests with over twenty Nigerians reported killed in the days following the poll.

The Independent Election Commission (INEC) has yet to announce formal results for all 34 states, but it seems clear that if the preliminary results are allowed to stand, the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) will score a major victory over the combined opposition parties. Naturally, the questionable administration of last week’s election raises several concerns about Saturday’s Presidential vote, which will be (if all goes well) the first peaceful handover of power in Nigeria since 1960.

In contrast to the democratic setbacks of last week’s vote, observers have witnessed several small victories for the rule of law and democratic governance in Nigeria in the lead up to the elections. Last year, President Obasanjo’s supporters made a concerted effort to have the constitution amended to allow him to serve a third term in office. Their attempts were blocked by the legislature in a move thought by many to indicate the advent of a true system of horizontal accountability among Nigerian state institutions.

President Obasanjo then trained his sights on Atiku Abubakar, the major opposition party candidate in Saturday’s presidential poll, by expelling him from the PDP and bringing him to trial on charges of corruption that, if true, would disqualify him as a potential president candidate. While the INEC initially agreed and banned Abubakar from contending, on Monday the Supreme Court reversed this ruling to allow Abubakar to run in Saturday’s election.

While these small victories for democracy seem diminished in light of the violence and fraud that punctuated last week’s elections, they remain important indicators of the relative levels of accountability between different branches of the federal government, an element of democratic governance lacking in many new democracies. These and other recent developments point to increasing parity and oversight among the several branches of the Nigerian federal government.

What does all this mean for Nigerian democracy? In short, it indicates a complex political system that’s in the midst of a major convulsion in terms of its power structures and institutional arrangements. It cannot be forgotten that whoever comes out of Saturday’s presidential election on top will control the vast resources of the Niger delta oilfields. In many ways it is not surprising that the legislative and judicial branches both moved to exert their authority prior to the election, ostensibly in hopes of institutionalizing a set of more equitable relationships that would secure their institutions as relevant centers of power under the new government.

Regardless of the true motives of the judicial and legislative elites, the result of their actions was a set of victories for democracy. Whether or not these small victories will be build upon or summarily reversed will likely depend on the results of Saturday’s election. Stay tuned!

Who’s the man in Iran?

With its hybrid design of republican and religious institutions, the Iranian government is a vast and opaque structure. Recently, I attended a meeting of the Iran Policy Forum at the U.S. Institute of Peace. The troika of Rob Grace, Hesham Sallam, and myself published a Peace Briefing on the event. The basic concensus around the room – and it was quite a top level group of Iran experts – is that there’s probably about 10 or so people who are really making the decisions over there. Ahmadinejad, starring here in his very own music video (for the record, I have no idea what the words mean, I just enjoy the dancing and his sensuous voice), was quite powerful for a while, but it seems that the higher ups in the office of the Faqih felt the Islamic Republic had endured enough embarassment from his anti-Semitic ranting and wanted to cool things off a bit. So, other regime officials, like the Supreme Leader’s chief of staff Mohammad Mohammadi Golpayegani, have begun to make high profile appearances and statements including a “scathing disavowel of Ahmadinejad’s controversial remarks on the Holocaust.”

For those of you interested in pseudodemocracies, Iran is an interesting case. It isn’t really a liberalized autocracy; the republican elements of the government have significant autonomy even though the religious side screens the candidates and can basically reject their laws as it wishes. However, public opinion is highly important to the regime because maintaining the status quo requires popular consent. The religious side does not want to come across as undermining the ‘democratic process’ and risk having people question its authority. All in all though, that’s one hell of a ‘reserved domain’. Any thoughts? Go read the Peace Briefing.