Human rights concerns fail to discourage Vietnam's aid donors
HANOI - Human rights groups and some diplomats may disapprove, but year after year the donor community chooses not to link its massive aid programme to Vietnam to an improvement in the communist nation's rights record.
Bilateral and multilateral donors pledged Wednesday 2.84 billion dollars in 2004 to help poverty reduction and economic growth efforts in the country, a 15 percent increase on the 2003 figure.
This came despite a series of heated exchanges over the past year between Vietnam and some of its donors, particularly the United States and the European Union, over the arrests and trials of religious and political dissidents.
On Tuesday, the New York-based Human Rights Watch called on donors to link aid to improvements in the nation's "dramatically" worsening human rights record. The organisation said the Vietnamese government had "spent the year arresting and imprisoning dozens of Buddhists, political dissidents, 'cyber-dissidents' and ethnic-minority Christians."
But the appeal seems to have fallen on deaf ears.
The European Union stressed the "promotion and protection of human rights should go hand-in-hand with the sustainable development of a country" but then pledged 528.95 million euros (640 million dollars).
"Greater tolerance of dissent and acceptance of different views are critical for investor confidence," the United States echoed, before pledging more than 50 million dollars.
"I don't think donors will want to derail existing and long-standing aid programmes. To attach conditionality would be counter effective," said Carl Thayer, a Vietnam expert at the Australian Defence Force Academy, before the meeting.
"There is a broader view that if other social and economic targets are met, an environment will be created where the political and civil aspects of human rights could be improved."
But this analysis is not shared by everyone. Some diplomats believe the bilateral and multilateral working groups set up to discuss human rights with the government are ineffective.
"If humans rights are not a clear objective in countries' commercial policies or development aid programmes, the Vietnamese government will only make the changes they want when they want to," said a long-time Vietnam watcher.
Working groups "do not work because there is no stick," another diplomat said.
Human rights compliance is rarely ever linked to a particular country's more broader national interests, he added.
"Unless someone tries to reduce or cut aid, Vietnam won't make a move. But nobody is ever willing to do it because human rights never top the agenda. All the countries take into account their national interests."
The only real pressure to cut aid comes from parliamentarians.
The US Congress is currently considering legislation that would link non-humanitarian assistance to Vietnam to improvements in its humans right record. And the European Parliament and the US House of Representatives both passed resolutions last month condemning religious repression in Vietnam.
"A certain number of member states refuse to attach conditions to assistance," said Olivier Dupuis, a member of the European Parliament representing the Transnational Radical Party.
"I don't think we should talk about sanctions. But we could attach conditions to some aid programmes with concrete progress in democratisation," added the Belgian deputy.
In reality, however, there tends to be a strict separation between a country's business interests and any human rights concerns, particularly since Hanoi objects violently to what it deems interference in its internal affairs.
In July when the US House of Representatives passed the human rights amendment, the foreign affairs committee of Vietnam's National Assembly hit back, saying it "revived the negative precedent of Cold War practice in international relations".
"Many diplomats do not believe this bill is a good idea," said one envoy who believes a combination of dialogue and cooperation is the only successful formula to improve the human rights situation in Vietnam.
"Confrontation is not a good approach in this country. It risks having Vietnamese tell us that they don't need us," he said.
"There is a risk of strong rejection and one cannot make advances in a country by isolating it."
Agence France Press - December 6, 2003.
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