[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 17]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 25082-25084]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                         AFRICA DEMOCRACY FORUM

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. DONALD M. PAYNE

                             of new jersey

                    in the house of representatives

                       Thursday, October 26, 2000

  Mr. PAYNE. Mr. Speaker, at the founding conference of the Africa 
Democracy Forum in Abuja, Nigeria, earlier this month, Carl Gershman, 
President of the US National Endowment for Democracy, delivered a 
thoughtful speech about the challenges and opportunities facing this 
important region. The conference brought together democratic activists 
to further cooperation in the promotion of human rights, good 
governance, and peace in the continent.
  I submit Mr. Gershman's speech for the Record, and I urge my 
colleagues to give serious attention to his remarks.

           AFRICA'S ROLE IN THE WORLD MOVEMENT FOR DEMOCRACY

Remarks delivered by Carl Gershman, President of the National Endowment 
for Democracy, at the founding conference of the Africa Democracy Forum 
                  in Abuja, Nigeria, October 3-4, 2000

       It's a great honor for me to join you in inaugurating the 
     Africa Democracy Forum (ADF), an Africa-wide network of 
     democratic activists that will both strengthen cooperation 
     among democrats on the African continent and link their 
     efforts to the World Movement for Democracy (WMD), the 
     worldwide democracy network that was established in New 
     Delhi, India, early last year. While this is my first visit 
     to Nigeria, I feel like I've been here many times before 
     since so many people in this room are friends with whom the 
     National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has worked for more 
     than a decade. I'm speaking of Ayo Obe, the President of the 
     Civil Liberties Organization (CLO), our co-host, who chaired 
     the final session of the inaugural assembly of the WMD, and 
     without whom it would not have been possible to adopt by 
     acclamation the Founding Declaration from which she just 
     read. I'm speaking also of Olisa Agbakoba, the founder of our 
     other co-host, the Human Rights Law Service (HURILAWS), who 
     has been in the forefront of the struggle for human rights 
     and the rule of law in Nigeria; of Clement Nwankwo, who was 
     with us in Washington in May 1999 to receive the NED's 
     Democracy Award on behalf of all the organizations comprising 
     the Transition Monitoring Group; of Abdul Ohroh, Innocent 
     Chukwuma, and of course Beko Ransome Kuti who has never 
     hesitated to stand against injustice whatever the personal 
     risk.
       The NED has been honored to support the democracy movement 
     in Nigeria during the most difficult period of military 
     dictatorship. Dave Peterson, our senior program officer for 
     Africa who spear-headed that support, could not be with us at 
     this conference, but his partner Learned Dees is here, and I 
     don't think I have to explain to anyone the importance of 
     Learned's contribution to democracy in Nigeria and in Africa 
     generally. I also want to recognize Ann Macro of the Human 
     Rights Unit of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, 
     which has made a grant supporting African participation in 
     this conference and in the WMD's next assembly that will take 
     place November 12-15 in Sao Paulo, Brazil. We've worked 
     closely with the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, our 
     partner democracy foundation in the United Kingdom, and we 
     look forward to further cooperation with our British friends 
     in supporting other important democratic initiatives in 
     Africa.
       It would be hard to exaggerate the tremendous changes that 
     have taken place in Africa since the mid-1980s when the NED 
     came into being. At the time, all but a small handful of 
     African countries were dictatorships, democracy movements 
     were repressed, and democracy NGOs were invisible or 
     nonexistent. The progress since then has been significant, if 
     uneven. As Abdul Ohroh has pointed out in the background 
     paper drafted for this conference, today 8 African countries 
     are rated as free according to the Freedom House annual 
     survey, while 24 are rated party free, and 21 are not free. 
     Abdul's paper also notes that there are in Africa today 20 
     electoral democracies, the term used by political scientists 
     to describe countries which hold reasonably fair elections, 
     but where full democratic participation and guarantees are 
     constrained by a variety of factors, among them official 
     corruption, centralized executive power and weak parliaments, 
     weak media, excessive military influence in politics, and a 
     judiciary that is not fully independent.
       With that caveat, it is important to note that there have 
     been historic democratic gains not only here in Nigeria but 
     in other African countries such as South Africa, Mozambique, 
     Niger, Namibia, Ghana, Malawi, Mali, and Benin. At the same 
     time, in countries such as Kenya, Gabon, Liberia, and 
     Cameroon, electoral forms have been used to conceal continued 
     authoritarian rule; the results of a real election were 
     overturned in Congo-Brazzaville; and civil war and state 
     collapse have overwhelmed the Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Sierra 
     Leone, and Angola.
       Clearly democracy faces enormous challenges in Africa, and 
     the difficulties that lie ahead are compounded by the extent 
     and depth of poverty and by the alarming spread of the 
     devastating AIDS virus. Nonetheless, there is a common 
     element in all the gains that have been made, which offers 
     hope and inspiration for the future. This element is the 
     decisive contribution made in every situation, even those 
     where violence has temporarily gained the upper hand, by 
     democratic political activists and the non-governmental 
     forces of civil society.
       Certainly this has been the case in Nigeria, where so many 
     organizations represented here led the resistance to the 
     military dictatorship and where the coalition of human rights 
     organizations, a combative independent press, women's groups, 
     trade unions, students, and others all raised the Nigerians' 
     understanding of and support for democracy. The pressures 
     they mounted against the Abacha regime, organizing domestic 
     protests and rallying international sympathy for their cause, 
     undoubtedly induced the interim government of Abdusalami 
     Abubakar to move ahead with democratic elections after 
     Abacha's demise. The more than 60 organizations that joined 
     together in the Transition Monitoring Group strengthened the 
     credibility of the election process while exposing its flaws, 
     thus helping to make possible the transition from military to 
     civilian rule--a contribution, as I've already noted, that we 
     recognized last year with a ceremony in the U.S. Capitol. 
     Significantly, these groups have not ceased their labors 
     since then but remain hard at work fighting corruption and 
     organized crime, and leading efforts to reform the police, 
     strengthen local government and independent media, improve 
     the environment, educate for democracy, reconcile communities 
     in conflict, and redress the problems in such areas as the 
     Niger Delta.
       Elsewhere, the contribution of African democrats has also 
     been impressive:
       In South Africa, where civil society groups led the 
     opposition to apartheid, built the culture of negotiation 
     that led to the 1994 negotiations, and have since reinforced 
     the remarkable transformation of that society. While the 
     challenges of AIDS, crime, and poverty remain in South 
     Africa, civil society has found an effective new role in 
     addressing these problems in a democratic society;
       In Zimbabwe, where a coalition of groups formed the 
     National Constitutional Assembly that first proposed 
     democratic reform of the constitution and then led a campaign 
     against a government attempt to hijack the initiative in a 
     constitutional referendum. The defeat of the government 
     proposal marked a reversal in its monopoly of power, and 
     culminated in the elections in June that restored multi-party 
     democracy to Zimbabwe.
       In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where despite the 
     increasing repression by the government of Laurent Kabila and 
     the reign of terror imposed in the territory controlled by 
     the rebels who oppose him, human rights and democracy 
     activists have preserved hope for the future. They were a 
     driving force behind the Lusaka Accords and the call for a 
     national dialogue that would include civil society. They have 
     maintained a steady flow of information on the horrendous 
     human rights abuses committed by all sides in the conflict, 
     ensuring that the plight of the people of the Congo is not 
     forgotten by the international community. They have decreased 
     the appeal of politicians who resort to ethnic hatred, 
     protected the independent press, and increased popular 
     awareness of human rights. Their work has been heroic.
       In Sierra Leone, where civic groups led by the trade unions 
     staged a general strike lasting nearly a year that helped 
     bring down the military junta that had overthrown the 
     democratically-elected civilian government of Tejan Kabbah. 
     These groups struggled for

[[Page 25083]]

     a just peace accord, but when the rebels reneged on the 
     agreement, they marched on the headquarters of the rebel 
     leader Foday Sankoh, declaring that ``enough is enough!'' 
     Many demonstrators were killed by Sankoh's bodyguards, but he 
     fled and was later captured and will now be tried for war 
     crimes. Meanwhile, NGOs are monitoring and promoting human 
     rights, reintegrating former combatants, and campaigning for 
     peace and democracy.
       In Angola, where a brave journalist who was invited to this 
     conference, Rafael Marques, has gone to jail for calling 
     Eduardo Dos Santos a dictator, and by so doing has galvanized 
     an incipient democratic movement, led by the church, to 
     demand an end to war, government corruption, and human rights 
     abuses.
       In the Sudan, where a coalition of women's and human rights 
     organizations have mounted peaceful protests in Khartoum 
     State, forcing the government to repeal a law that would have 
     prohibited women from engaging in any form of public 
     employment, such as working in banks, restaurants, government 
     offices, or gasoline stations, potentially throwing thousands 
     of women out of work. In Southern Sudan, civil society 
     groups, led by the Council of Churches, are pressing ahead 
     with a peace campaign which has dramatically reduced the 
     fighting among rival factions that has killed hundreds of 
     thousands of Sudanese in the last decade.
       And in Chad, where human rights activists, supported by 
     their counterparts in Senegal and the Congo, have managed to 
     get the former dictator, Hissene Habre, convicted of crimes 
     against humanity, following the precedent of legal action 
     taken against the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. 
     Although Senegal's new president, Abdoulaye Wade, managed to 
     have the decision reversed, human rights activists are 
     confident they can restore the conviction.
       These are just a few of many examples that can be cited of 
     how the democracy movement in Africa is effectively 
     contributing to the cause of human rights, good governance, 
     and peace. The problems Africa confronts are profound but not 
     inevitable. They can be reversed if there is real 
     accountability and transparency--in other words, real 
     democracy. In a word, democracy is not possible without 
     democrats. Their contribution--your contribution--is the 
     precondition for building democracy on the continent.
       Having noted the central role played by the African 
     democracy movement, it is also important to recognize the 
     influence of international factors on the development of 
     democracy in Africa. For example, as the international 
     movement of human rights gathered momentum in the 1980s, the 
     Organization of African Unity adopted the African Chapter on 
     Human and People's Rights. While the Charter did not 
     specifically address the issue of democracy, or at least did 
     so only tangentially, it provided new space for democracy 
     activists to function within the framework of human rights, 
     which the governments officially recognized.
       A second international factor was the ``third-wave'' of 
     democratization, a process which began with the revolution in 
     Portugal in 1974 (which itself had been precipitated by the 
     unsuccessful colonial war in Angola) and later spread to 
     Latin America, Asia, Central Europe, and eventually Africa. 
     The downfall of dictatorships in these regions, and 
     especially the collapse of communism in Central Europe and 
     the former Soviet Union, had a powerful effect in Africa. In 
     the first place, many African dictatorships saw the writing 
     on the wall and immediately set in motion processes leading 
     to the establishment of multi-party electoral competition. 
     Even where this competition was controlled by the old regime, 
     it offered new space for democracy activists to develop 
     programs of civic education and to appeal to the 
     international community for support. Moreover, the passing of 
     the Cold War and the added effect of ending a bi-polar 
     international system that allowed tyrants in Africa to play 
     the major powers off against one another, appealing for 
     support--even from a democracy such as the United States--by 
     presenting themselves as strategic allies. The end of the 
     Cold War brought this cynical process to a close and put new 
     pressure on African governments to democratize as a condition 
     for winning international support and assistance.
       The end of apartheid in South Africa was yet another factor 
     that added to the pressures for democratization in Africa. 
     The struggle against white minority rule in South Africa so 
     dominated the politics of the African continent that it 
     completely overshadowed the question of black authoritarian 
     rule in other countries. With the end of apartheid, which 
     itself represented an historic gain for African democracy, 
     the focus shifted to the nature of the political regimes in 
     black Africa. No longer could African dictators escape 
     scrutiny by proclaiming their opposition to apartheid. In the 
     post-apartheid era they would, like rules in other regions, 
     be judged according to the universal standard of democracy.
       In keeping with the emphasis on democracy in this new era, 
     many countries in Europe and North America have established 
     programs to bolster the efforts in Africa to build democratic 
     institutions. Some of these programs were undertaken by 
     governments as part of their development assistance budgets. 
     But an important new dimension of such assistance has been in 
     the creation of independent democracy-promotion foundations 
     such as the National Endowment for Democracy and the 
     Westminster Foundation for Democracy. The financial and 
     technical assistance provided to democratic activists by 
     these programs, along with the involvement of many Western 
     NGOs in the growing field of democracy promotion, constitutes 
     a new and innovative force for advancing democracy in Africa.
       Not all the new international factors have aided democracy 
     in a clear and unambiguous fashion. The economic, 
     technological, and communications revolution that has been 
     given the name ``globalization'' has not been welcomed by 
     many people in Africa and in other regions as well. Some see 
     it as a menacing force that can marginalize less advanced 
     economies. there is also concern that the dynamic of global 
     integration that is a central aspect of this new period 
     threatens local cultures, religions, and identities. But 
     there are also those who understand that globalization in an 
     unavoidable challenge. For them, the issue is one of creative 
     adaptation--of learning to utilize the new technologies to 
     discover new ways to empower local groups with knowledge and 
     to connect them with allies in their own countries and 
     beyond.
       The Africa Democracy Forum is one such response to the 
     challenge of globalization, and the World Movement for 
     Democracy is another. The hope is that by establishing such 
     cooperative networks local democracy groups will be empowered 
     in new and important ways. They will be able to share 
     experiences, to identify ``best practices'' that help 
     governments (especially local governments) serve the people 
     more effectively, and to develop indices, such as the 
     Democracy Perception Index that will be discussed at this 
     conference, that can help measure and evaluate government 
     performance. In addition, such networks empower groups by 
     giving them a voice that will command far more attention in 
     the new arenas of global politics than if each tried to speak 
     alone. Not least, they can develop allies in other 
     democratizing countries and in the advanced democracies who 
     can defend their interests in distant and often inaccessible 
     international bodies. Linkages, voice, a seat at the table, 
     solidarity, and mutual aid--these are the keys to the 
     empowerment of civil society and local NGOs in the era of 
     globalization.
       As the Africa Democracy Forum develops and begins to play a 
     role within the World Movement for Democracy (the ADF, I 
     should note, will convene an Africa regional meeting at the 
     next assembly of the WMD, which will take place in Sao Paulo, 
     Brazil, from November 12-15), the question of the inter-
     relationship between regional and international factors 
     deserves careful consideration. Local democracy groups should 
     give thought not only to strengthening their voice 
     internationally, but also to utilizing their international 
     relationships to exercise leverage on African governments to 
     implement meaningful political and economic reforms.
       For example, 19 sub-Saharan African countries participated 
     in the ``Community of Democracies'' ministerial conference 
     that was held last June in Warsaw, Poland. (These countries 
     were Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Kenya, 
     Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritius, Mozambique, 
     Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, 
     Seychelles, South Africa, and Tanzania.) Each of these 
     countries approved the Warsaw Declaration, which included 
     such fundamental democratic principles as the right to free 
     elections; equal protection of the law; freedom of 
     expression, religion, assembly, and association; free 
     communications media; freedom from arbitrary arrest or 
     detention; minority rights; equal access to education; 
     judicial independence; government accountability and 
     transparency; civilian control over the military; and the 
     obligation of governments to refrain from extra-
     constitutional actions. While most of the African governments 
     that approved this declaration are making genuine efforts to 
     honor these principles, there may be some whose performance 
     has been problematic, such as Burkina Faso and Kenya. In 
     these cases, local NGOs might want to consider the 
     establishment of ``Warsaw Watch'' committees (modeled on the 
     highly effective Helsinki Watch committees established in 
     Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union following the adoption in 
     1975 of the Helsinki Declaration) that would monitor their 
     government's performance and appeal for international support 
     from the Warsaw signatory countries if their government 
     should violate the principles it endorsed in Warsaw. WMD 
     participants from those signatory countries, especially in 
     North America and Europe, could be contacted by the local 
     NGOs to enlist their governments to pressure the country in 
     question to honor the democratic commitments it made at the 
     Warsaw meeting.
       Then there is the whole question of the international 
     financial institutions and the debts owed by poor countries 
     in the context of globalization. At the present time, debt 
     relief has not been tied to democratic reform. Nor can one 
     count on the groups that have protested globalization to make 
     this

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     link since they seem more interested decrying inequality as a 
     way of indicting the affluent countries than in encouraging 
     the poor nations to reform by developing measures to root out 
     corruption, nepotism, ethnic domination, and repression of 
     the media and to achieve good governance, the rule of law, 
     and real protection for human rights. The demand for such 
     reforms will have to come from within the poor nations from 
     the groups that are fighting for democratic reform, 
     transparency, and accountability.
       The idea of conditioning debt relief on the implementation 
     of measures to achieve lasting democratic reforms has been 
     advanced by our good friend Larry Diamond, who has noted that 
     the amounts owed by African governments are in many cases 
     ``equaled or exceeded by what its political leaders have 
     embezzled from the state.'' Simply to forgive the debts, he 
     has written, ``would reinforce the irresponsibility that has 
     brought the continent to this juncture.'' With this in mind, 
     he has called for a new international bargain--``debt for 
     democracy and development for good governance.'' According to 
     Larry's proposal, debt repayments would be incrementally 
     suspended as countries establish laws and structures to 
     monitor public assets and the conduct of public officials, to 
     audit public accounts, to protect the independence of the 
     judiciary from political interference or ethnic favoritism, 
     to ensure public access to government information, to promote 
     freedom of the press, and to take other measures that foster 
     transparency, accountability, and overall good governance. He 
     also urges that debt relief be complemented by assistance to 
     train public officials and civil society leaders.
       I would add one additional measure to supplement Larry's 
     excellent proposal: The international community should work 
     with democratic African governments and NGOs to locate and 
     recover looted funds and to prosecute those individuals, many 
     of whom are living in luxurious exile, who have committed 
     these crimes, ad well as the financial institutions and 
     individuals in the affluent countries that have been 
     complicit in carrying them out.
       The agenda for reform needs to be shaped and monitored by 
     African democrats. That's what you are attempting to do by 
     creating a Democracy Perception Index. But you will need 
     support in implementing your agenda and in getting African 
     governments to adopt the reforms you will propose. Here, I 
     believe, the World Movement for Democracy offers a new and 
     unique resource--that of international political and moral 
     solidarity. It is one that I hope you will not hesitate to 
     use. I hope we will respond effectively to your needs and 
     that together we will work toward a genuine renaissance of 
     democracy in Africa.

     

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