Political Conditionality and Humanitarian Aid

PREFACEThanks to Such for this debate! I would also like to remark that Such has been on DDO for nearly a year, and has yet to do a debate; I am very, very honored that he chose me to be his first opponent on DDO, and I hope to ensure that he enjoys the debating experience. DEFINITIONSPolitical - of or relating to government, a government, or the conduct of government Condition - a premise upon which the fulfillment of an agreement dependsHumanitarian Aid - aid and action designed to save lives, alleviate suffering...during and in the aftermath of emergenciesUnjust - not just; i.e., not acting or being in conformity with what is morally upright or goodThe above were from [4] and [8].PRO's CASEFrameworkAccording to G.W.F. Hegel, autonomy separates us from all other things. A table cannot be blamed for a moral failing because it cannot choose to do something wrong. A human, on the other hand, is morally relevant insofar as we have this autonomy. This moral worth grants every person an inherent dignity that should be respected. "At the heart of [human dignity] is a twofold intuition about human beings: namely, that all, just by being human, are of equal dignity and worth, no matter where they are situated in society, and that the primary source of this worth is a power of moral choice within them, a power that consists in the ability to plan a life in accordance with one's own evaluation of ends." [1] From this analysis, we can conclude that it is a human's rational autonomy that gives rise to human dignity. Autonomy is the brightline that separates personhood from other conditions, and that marks out human beings as worthy of moral consideration.The impact of human dignity on moral decision-making is very simple: "to be a person is to have a status and worth that is unlike that of any other kind of being: it is to be an end in itself with dignity. And the only response that is appropriate to such a being is respect. Respect is the acknowledgment in attitude and conduct of the dignity of persons as ends in themselves. Respect for such beings is not only appropriate but also morally and unconditionally required." [2] We can justify the impact of human dignity on moral decision-making in two, independently functioning way. First off, when an agent is used as a means to an end, they are treated as a tool by other. This reduces individuals to objects (or tools) and thus devalues them as autonomous persons. Simply put, using people as a means to an end forces us to view them as mere things by which we attain some goal, vice viewing them as actual persons. Secondly, treating people as a means to an end may violate a person's freedom of choice. Consider, I wish to eat some cake (my desired end). I decide that I can use you to do that by baking it for me. If you agree to this arrangement, and are compensated for your work, I haven't used you as a means to an end, because the deal was voluntary and you were allowed to own your labor and abilities. Yet, if I force you to bake the cake, without compensation or freedom, then I have used you as a means to an end. So, when you USE someone, there is no freedom of choice for the person being used; they are no better off than a slave.So, the framework by which we ought to evaluate this round is (a) deontological in nature, and (b) recognizes the human dignity of persons. ArgumentsContention One: Preconditions use Innocent People as Bartering ChipsThe purpose of political conditionality is to force some form of governmental change to take place within a country or region. Oftentimes, these changes are resisted by local populations or official; if they were not being resisted, then there would be little need to place the conditions in the first place. Therefore, political conditionality is a mechanism by which change is forced upon a society. This is inherently coercive in itself, and seems to violate the state's national sovereignty, but there is also an impact to human dignity here.Consider that humanitarian crises pose grave problems. Humanitarian aid is primarily EMERGENCY assistance. When, for example, a war is ravaging a nation, humanitarian aid is sent to alleviate the harm and suffering that results from that conflict. Placing political conditions on humanitarian aid uses the suffering of the people to pressure government's into giving in. They effectively say to a government: "Look...your people are dying in massive numbers and you're facing massive internal pressure to deal with this crisis. If you want our help, than you need to agree to conditions X, Y, and Z." In this way, political conditions use the suffering of innocent victims as a means to pressure others into action--they treat those people as tools.Furthermore, "Two important features of political conditionality are its ex ante nature and punitive character: predetermined conditions are set in advance to access development financing and failure to meet these precludes further disbursements of aid.” [3] This evidence just bolsters the idea that the living conditions and suffering of the people is objectified and reduced to nothing more that a tool in the toolkit when political conditionality is attached to aid.Contention Two: Sovereignty affirms the Unjust Nature of ConditionalitySovereignty is the concept that a State, not simply a person, has "freedom from external control: autonomy." [4] A sovereign derives its power from its people, and so we can say that a sovereign state earns its legitimacy through the consent of its citizens. This provides us a clear link to human dignity, insofar as we bring things back to the people. I'll explain what I mean.The U.S. government has no official power in, say, Indonesia, because the citizens of Indonesia have not consented to U.S. governance. The citizens of Indonesia have instead used their autonomy to validate their own government in Jakarta. To disrespect the sovereignty of the Indonesian government, by extension, is to disrespect the autonomy of the people who consented to that government. Essentially, to disrespect Jakarta's sovereignty would be to say that the autonomous choices of a certain person or group of people don't matter, and that their decisions can be ignored, overlooked, or violated. Therefore, sovereignty in a legitimate government is also a matter of human dignity.Placing political conditions on humanitarian aid violates sovereignty by violating the autonomy of the state. Countries in need of humanitarian aid are oftentimes in no position to refuse that aid; thus, refusing to accept is not an option that can be considered in any meaningful sense. This means that outside donor states are, in many cases, in a position to dictate terms to needy countries--a clear, unjust, and flagrant violation of their sovereignty.“Of greatest concern, perhaps, is the inherent tension between conditions imposed by an outside lender and the cardinal democratic principle of consent. By their very nature, IMF conditions arise not from debate and discussion within a society, but come rather from unelected foreign experts. Locally made decisions lose relevance as conditionality ties the hands of domestic political actors." [5]OFF-CASEAt this time, I would also like to speak very briefly to the efficacy of political conditionality, as this may come up later in the debate. Point One: Conditionality creates a lack of “ownership," leading to failed reforms.By "owernship" I am referring to a country's commitment to a reform agenda. When reforms are imposed on a country from the outside--as partially evidenced by the IMF card earlier--local people naturally feel less invested in the reforms. With less interest and focus being dedicated to those reforms, they are more likely to fail; people have no "stake" in their success. “If countries displayed no initial tendency to implement reforms of the desired type, then conditional lending appeared to have little effect in encouraging reform. The only countries that appeared to meet conditions were those whose governments favored the economic policies embodied in the adjustment program; it was government preferences, not aid conditions, that determined reform efforts.” [6] Oliver Morrissey of the University of Nottigham writes, "Decisions on policy-based lending cannot overlook the tensions between limited country ownership and the use of conditionality to ensure that reform objectives are achieved. If a country’s commitment or implementation capacity is weak, conditionality is unlikely to be effective. By itself conditionality cannot lead to the adoption of better policies if there is no consensus for reform.”Point Two: Conditionality Promote Autocracy“A recipient government may be able to exploit the infringement of sovereignty inherent in conditionality to arouse national feelings against external interference, thus diverting attention from domestic problems. It is true that a few ruling parties in Africa have actually emerged as stronger from the pressures to democratize, retaining power and even consolidating it...Such examples are Togo, Cameroon, Guinea...[and] the fundamentalist Islamic regime in Sudan.” [7]SOURCES1 - http://tibormachan.rationalreview.com...2 - http://plato.stanford.edu...3 - http://www.mafhoum.com...4 - http://www.merriam-webster.com...5 - Devesh Kapur & Richard Webb, Harvard University, 2000, Governance-Related Conditionalities of the International Financial Institutions, G-24 Discussion Paper No. 6, August, p. 86 - Stefan G. Koeberle, World Bank, 2003, The World Bank Research Observer, Fall, Vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 249-273, p. 2607 - Gordon Crawford, Centre for Development Studies, University of Leeds, 1997, Democratization, 4:3, 69-108, p. 848 - http://www.globalhumanitarianassistance.org...Thanks, again! Over to Con...