Perspectives on human rights an introduction

by Issa G. Shivji, Professor of Law, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

(shivji.pdf)

Human rights in context

Human rights are often presented as claims or entitlements. It is also said that rights belong to
individuals. Both these ideas arise from a philosophical perspective which assumes that
human beings exist as isolated individuals who make claims or possess entitlements in
isolation.
An exactly opposite philosophical perspective tells us that human beings are social beings, not
individual beings. Society is a web of relations social, economic, cultural and political which
have been constructed historically as different interests in society interact, clash and contradict
and give birth to new sets of relations. Social struggles, therefore, are the base from which
social relations develop.
Social relations are articulated, understood, justified, and rationalised in different, and often,
contradictory sets of ideas called ideologies. The ideology of rights as equal individual rights,
or as legal claims and or as entitlements, arose at a particular time in the history of Western
societies as those societies evolved from various kinds of feudal relations to capitalist relations.
The idea of equality, as was pointed out by Engels (1969, p. 124), is ancient, but thousands of
years had to pass before 'that original conception of relative equality could lead to the
conclusion that men should have equal rights in the state and society'. The transition from the
ancient conception, which existed in many civilisations and societies, that all human beings, as
human beings, have something in common, and to that extent they are equal, to the conception
of equal rights in political society is a transition from a pre-capitalist to a capitalist world.
Sir Henry Maine, a well-known 19th century English historian of law, observed that 'the
movement of the progressive societies has hitherto been a movement from Status to Contract'.
This captures the transition from societies in which the worth of the individual was based on the
position he or she occupied in the hierarchy of statuses, to a society where human worth is
determined by one's position on the market.
In both cases, there is underlying inequality. In a society based on status, inequality is
transparent on the surface, while in a society based on contract (whose highest form is the
capitalist society) fundamental inequality is hidden behind the apparent equality of the market.
As Anatole France put it, 'In the majestic equality of law, both the rich and the poor are free to
beg in the streets and sleep under the bridges.'
The modern human rights debate or discourse is constructed on the philosophical
foundation of the human being as an individual, and not as a social being. This lies at the centre
of many of the controversies in human rights discourse that you will come across in this course.
The values and principles that underlie the human rights discourse have been constructed
historically in the course of social struggles. Therefore, human rights is a contentious discourse

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in which different, and often contradictory, perspectives representing different interests in

national and international society, seek dominance or hegemony.
Just as dominant and dominating interests may employ the ideology of human rights to justify
and rationalise their dominance, so also the forces that seek to resist dominance may deploy
human rights to mobilise their resistance. Human rights, as we know them today, were born in a
period of contention. They were born in the context of the cold war between the socialist and the
capitalist system on the one hand, and in the context of the wars of national liberation from
imperial/colonial domination, on the other. This context has had a major impact on the debates
within, and about, human rights. We therefore must not lose sight of this context as we try to
understand human rights in this course.

Human rights as a contentious discourse

The most celebrated document in the history of human rights, the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights (UDHR), was adopted in 1948 when the world had just emerged from one of the
most devastating wars. There were only 56 member states of the United Nations with only three
from Africa, including apartheid South Africa, which adopted the UDHR.
But the world was a long way from recognising the universal human being. More than twothirds of the world's peoples were colonised and referred to as natives. They were not thought
to be human enough to have human rights! President Roosevelt's four freedoms freedom of
speech and expression, freedom to worship 'god' in your own way, freedom from want and
freedom from fear (no wars between states) which are supposed to have provided the building
blocks of the UDHR did not include the freedom most central to the colonised peoples: 'freedom
from colonial oppression' or the right to national self-determination.
The post-war international scene was characterised by the ideological cold war between the
socialist block and the capitalist block on the one hand and the 'hot-war' of national liberation
between Western imperial powers and colonised peoples on the other.
The human rights ideology was incubated in the crucible of the cold war (1945-90) and reflected
the political, ideological and military disagreements and struggles underlying it. While the Cold
War was cold in Europe, it was very hot in the Third World, Africa included. There was not a
single year from 1945 to 1990 when there was not conflict somewhere in the world.
The conflict, often violent and destructive of human beings, was directly or indirectly fuelled or
supported by the then super-powers more often than not by the champion of human rights,
the United States of America (USA). The use and abuse of human rights by dominating powers
can be illustrated with the following examples.
During much of the cold war and to this day, the USA presented, and continues to present, itself
as the champion of freedom, democracy and individual rights, despite the fact that it was at the
same time trampling on the basic rights of Third World peoples their rights to life and selfdetermination as it propelled and fuelled wars and supported dictators in Africa (Mobutu, for
example), Asia (Marcos of the Philippines and Suharto of Indonesia) and Latin America

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(Pinochet of Chile and a host of murderous dictators in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua,

etc).
In contrast to this reality, which is often glossed over or even ignored in much of the human
rights debate, the typical rhetoric of US politicians is to disguise the dominating character of the
superpower as a defender of human rights and freedom. Notice the following, not atypical,
statement which the former US President Clinton made in 1996:
When I came to office, I was determined that our country would go into the 21st century still
the world's greatest force for peace and freedom, for democracy and security and prosperity.
(Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States 1996, p. 654)
In the same year, the Amnesty International report said the following:
Throughout the world, on any given day, a man, woman or child is likely to be displaced,
tortured, killed or 'disappeared', at the hands of governments or armed political groups. More
often than not, the United States shares the blame.
(Amnesty 1996, p. 1)
The double-standards in human rights discourse, and the unequal power relations which
underlie it, is not fully appreciated if human rights are presented as apolitical, asocial and
ahistorical values inherent in us all because we are human beings. The setting of human rights
standards through international conventions and declarations is itself a very contentious political
process which demonstrates the gross inequalities of the world capitalist and imperial system.
One of the most debated points in human rights is the distinction drawn between political and
civil rights and social and economic rights. It is said that Western countries give priority to
political and civil rights while the then Eastern block and Third World countries consider social
and economic rights more important.
Another debating point is the division between individual rights and collective rights. Once
again, this division is drawn on ideological lines, the Western countries privileging individual
rights over collective rights while the Third World doing the opposite.
The debate is foggy and unenlightening and appears endless because it is not placed in the
context of political economy and history. For example, developed capitalist countries have
always given a high priority to the right to private property, which is an economic right, while
undermining the right to self-determination, which, as a democratic right, is eminently a political
right. In the modern corporate economies, the right to private property can hardly be
categorised as an individual right, while individual political and civil rights, of course, make no
sense in countries and nations whose peoples have no right to self-determination.
Thus the way human rights are prioritised and categorised is itself open to debate,
demonstrating the ideological nature of human rights discourse. Like all ideological discourses,
half-truths and untruths are presented as absolute truths and whole truths. We should be wary
therefore of a perspective on human rights which does not treat human rights in the context of
history and social struggles.

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Wherever there is oppression and injustice, there is bound to be resistance and struggle. In this
process, the oppressors justify and rationalise their oppression in ideologies of domination, just
as the oppressed mobilise and articulate their resistance in the ideologies of struggle and
resistance.
In the present era, as globalisation is touted as the universal human good, we are also
witnessing unprecedented inequalities, injustices, oppression, and levels of poverty and
deprivation, which make a mockery of our basic humanity, let alone human rights.
The richest 225 people in the world have a combined wealth equal to the annual income of
almost half the population of the earth; 1.2 billion of humanity wallows in subhuman existence at
less that US$1 a day (Human Rights Development Report 2002) when less than 4 per cent of
the wealth of the richest 225 people would be sufficient to pay the additional costs to achieve
and maintain universal access to basic education, health care, maternity care, adequate food,
safe water and sanitation for the whole human race (Peacock 2002, pp. 15 and 17). 'Every year
about 11 million children die of preventable causes, often for want of simple and easily provided
improvements in nutrition, sanitation, maternal health and education.' (Human Rights
Development Report 2002)
What Africa pays in debt-servicing and through loss of terms of trade every year would be more
than enough to provide decent health, education and safe drinking water to every man, woman
and child on the continent. Meanwhile, for the last 10 to 15 years, Africa has been subjected to
unprecedented dictation from the international financial organisations and the so-called donor
community. The neo-liberal policies adopted as a result have plunged the continent deeper into
poverty with little prospect of improvement as its resources are pillaged by multinational
corporations and its politics increasingly entrapped in the game of musical chairs for the
minuscule urban elites.
It is within this wider socio-economic context that we are also witnessing human rights and its
allied values of democracy, good governance, poverty alleviation, etc, becoming the currency of
political and civil debate. This has drawn in many well-intentioned and dedicated people who
are activists in myriad human rights NGOs. No doubt the aim is to create a better world, a better
Africa. But to create a better world we have to understand the world better. We must therefore
understand the human rights discourse better, so that we may be able to reconstruct and
reconceptualise it lest we become part of the dominating, rather than a liberating, project.
In the next section, I give examples of how human rights have been reconceptualised. These
examples, to some extent, illustrate the potential of human rights as an ideology of resistance.

Human rights as resistance

Right of peoples to self-determination
As we saw, the UDHR did not include the right of nations and peoples to self-determination
although the declaration was born in the midst of a world in which more than two-thirds of the
human race lived under colonial or semi-colonial conditions. The right to self-determination,
however, was not alien to the dominating powers.

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President Woodrow Wilson of the US is credited with having first formulated the right in the
context of the Treaty of Versailles after the First World War, which dismantled the AustroHungarian Empire and recognised the right of European nations to form independent states. But
this was meant for the European peoples, not the coloured races of the world. As Robert
Lansing, Wilson's Secretary of State, said during the peace conference:
The more I think about the President's declaration as to the right of 'self-determination', the
more convinced I am of the danger of putting such ideas into the minds of certain races. It is
bound to be the basis of impossible demands on the Peace Conference and create trouble
in many lands.
What effect will it have on the Irish, the Indians, the Egyptians, and the nationalists among
the Boers? Will it not breed discontent, disorder, and rebellion? Will not the Mohammedans
of Syria and Palestine and possibly of Morocco and Tripoli rely on it?
(Furedi 1994, p.13)
The right to self-determination got its first mention in the international covenants of 1966 when
most colonised countries had gained their independence. Even then the USA refused to ratify
the covenants precisely because of its opposition to the article on self-determination.
In spite of its inclusion in the covenants, the meaning and implications of this right remains a
subject of considerable debate and controversy. Most Western human rights lawyers refuse to
recognise it as a right and discuss it only at the level of a political principle, while states restrict
the meaning of the right only to colonised and occupied countries, refusing to extend it to
peoples within independent states (Twining 1991).
In the context of the rising national liberation movements and new forms of imperial domination,
a number of liberation movements, trade unions and activist intellectuals meeting in Algiers in
1976 adopted the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Peoples (Algiers Declaration) (see
Appendix A). The Algiers Declaration is a fine example of the reconceptualisation of the rights
ideology by civil society to legitimise the struggle of peoples. The Algiers Declaration does not
pretend to set any standards nor freeze these standards as enforceable rights of individuals to
stabilise the status quo, but rather it consciously sums up people's struggles so as to legitimise
them.
By further rethinking the right to self-determination and giving the term 'people' a contextual
meaning, this right also has the potential to capture the current struggle of the African people for
democracy from below and genuine participation in governance (Shivji and Cullinan 1993, pp.
4755).
The right to self-determination, it can be argued, includes the right of the people to be consulted
on all matters that affect their lives. Just as an individual has a right to be heard before any
adverse action is taken against him/her, so the people have a right to be consulted before
decisions are made affecting them. In the case of Tellis v. Bombay Municipal (LRC 1987 [Const
351]), the Indian Supreme Court made this interesting observation, which successfully links the
notion of the right to self-determination with that of democracy and participatory governance,
although the court did not specifically use that language.

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The right to be heard has two facets, intrinsic and instrumental. The intrinsic value of that
right consists in the opportunity which it gives to individuals or groups, against whom
decisions taken by public authorities operate, to participate in the proceedings by which
those decisions are made, an opportunity that expresses their dignity as persons... (right of
the poor to participate in public processes.) (LRC 1987 p.376)
The right to self-determination has been a major weapon used by various NGOs to argue and
articulate the case against the ruinous economic policies the International Monetary Fund and
the World Bank have imposed on African and other developing countries. In February 2002, a
number of NGOs campaigning against Third World debts convened a People's Tribunal in Porto
Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil to hear evidence and adjudicate upon the legality and
legitimacy of the debts. The 'verdict' (see Appendix B) deploys with great effect the language of
human rights generally, and particularly the language of the right to self-determination, in order
to show that Third World debts are illegitimate and that the people of the South are fully justified
in resisting payment of these debts.
Right to life
The right to life is considered a basic right. Indeed, the right of peoples to self-determination and
right to life together may be justifiably called the mother of all rights.
In the mainstream interpretations, the right to life is given a narrow meaning of the right to
existence. Various campaigns against capital punishment and torture have been anchored in
this right. But Third World jurists and human rights activists, faced with extreme poverty and
inhuman existence in their societies, have imaginatively expanded the meaning of the right to
life to include the right to livelihood, right to shelter, right to land and right to food (Shivji 1999).
In the case of Tellis v. Bombay Municipal cited above, the Indian Supreme Court argued that
the right to life includes the right to livelihood 'because no person can live without the means of
living, that is, the means of livelihood'. This argument has been well summed up by a leading
Indian human rights thinker and activist Upendra Baxi (1994) as a right to be human. The great
African leader, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, the former president of Tanzania, conceptualised the
integral and composite nature of the right to life thus:
Life is the most basic Human Right. If justice means anything at all, it must protect life. That
should be a constant underlying purpose of all social, economic, and political activities of
government at all levels.
To have food, clothing, shelter, and other basic necessities of life; to live without fear; to
have an opportunity to work for one's living'; freedom of association, of speech, and of
worship. All these things together are among the basic principles of living as a whole person
in 'Freedom and Justice'. In other words, all are almost universally accepted as basic
'Human Rights'.
(Daily News 1993)

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Conclusion
In this way, the language of rights is deployed to articulate the most pressing concerns of the
large majority of people while at the same time providing the language of resistance against,
and changing of, the existing conditions. It is important, therefore, that activist NGOs and other
human rights advocates are conscious of the different perspectives on human rights, so that
they know what to promote, in whose interest and in which direction.

References
Amnesty International (1996) Human Rights & US Security Assistance. Washington DC:
Amnesty International, quoted in William Blum (2001) The Rogue State: A Guide To The
World's Only Superpower, London: Zed Books
Baxi, U (1994) Mambrino's Helmet: Human Rights For A Changing World. New Delhi: HarAnand
Daily News (1993) Tanzania (27 September)
Engels, F (1969) Anti-Duhring. Moscow: Progress Publishers
Furedi, F (1994) The New Ideology of Imperialism. London: Pluto Press
Human Rights Development Report (2002) www.undp.org/hdr20002/facts.html
Peacock, A (2002) Two Hundred Pharaohs and Five Billion Slaves. London: Ellipsis
Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States (US Government Printing Office) (1996) 1:
654, April 28, quoted in William Blum (2001) The Rogue State: A Guide To The World's Only
Superpower, London: Zed Books, opening quotes
Shivji, I (1999) 'Constructing a new rights regime: promises, problems and prospects', Social
and Legal Studies 8 (2): 253-276
Shivji, I and P Cullinan (1993) 'Judgements by panels of deans and chief justices, in Raymond
Sakala et. al. v. the Government of the Kingdom of Caprivia', in M Malila, J Sarkin and F Viljoen
(eds) From Human Wrongs to Human Rights Part 2, Pretoria: Centre for Human Rights,
University of Pretoria; also printed (1992) in Lesotho Law Journal 8 (1):1-16
Twining, W (ed) (1991) Issues of Self-determination. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press

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Appendix A:
Universal Declaration of the Rights of Peoples (Algiers, 4 July 1976)
Preamble
We live at a time of great hopes and deep despair; a time of conflicts and contradictions; a time
when liberation struggles have succeeded in arousing the peoples of the world against the
domestic and international structures of imperialism and in overturning colonial systems; a time
of struggle and victory in which new ideals of justice among and within nations have been
adopted; a time when the General Assembly of the United Nations has given increasing
expression, from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to the Charter on the Economic
Rights and Duties of States, to the quest for a new international, political and economic order.
But this is also a time of frustration and defeat, as new forms of imperialism evolve to oppress
and exploit the peoples of the world. Imperialism, using vicious methods, with the complicity of
governments that it has itself often installed, continues to dominate a part of the world. Through
direct or indirect intervention, through multinational enterprises, through manipulation of corrupt
local politicians, with the assistance of military regimes based on police repression, torture and
physical extermination of opponents, through a set of practices that has become known as neocolonialism, imperialism extends its stranglehold over many peoples.
Aware of expressing the aspirations of our era, we met in Algiers to proclaim that all the peoples
of the world have an equal right to liberty, the right to free themselves from any foreign
interference and to choose their own government, the right if they are under subjection, to fight
for their liberation and the right to benefit from other peoples' assistance in their struggle.
Convinced that the effective respect for human rights necessarily implies respect for the rights
of peoples, we have adopted the Universal Declaration for the Rights of Peoples.
May all those who, throughout the world, are fighting the great battle, at times through armed
struggle, for the freedom of all peoples, find in this Declaration the assurance of the legitimacy
of their struggle.
Section I. Right to Existence
Article 1
Every people has the right to existence.
Article 2
Every people has the right to the respect of its national and cultural identity.
Article 3
Every people has the right to retain peaceful possession of its territory and to return to it if it is
expelled.
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Article 4
None shall be subjected, because of his national or cultural identity, to massacre, torture,
persecution, deportation, expulsion or living conditions such as may compromise the identity or
integrity of the people to which he belongs.
Section II. Right to Political Self-determination
Article 5
Every people has an imprescriptible and unalienable right to self-determination. It shall
determine its political status freely and without any foreign interference.
Article 6
Every people has the right to break free from any colonial or foreign domination, whether direct
or indirect, and from any racist regime.
Article 7
Every people has the right to have democratic government representing all the citizens without
distinction as to race, sex, belief or colour, and capable of ensuring effective respect for the
human rights and fundamental freedoms for all.
Section III. Economic Rights of Peoples
Article 8
Every people has an exclusive right over its natural wealth and resources. It has the right to
recover them if they have been despoiled, as well as any unjustly paid indemnities.
Article 9
Scientific and technical progress being part of the common heritage of mankind, every people
has the right to participate in it.
Article 10
Every people has the right to a fair evaluation of its labour and to equal and just terms in
international trade.
Article 11
Every people has the right to choose its own economic and social system and pursue its own
path to economic development freely and without any foreign interference.

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Article 12
The economic rights set forth shall be exercised in a spirit of solidarity amongst the peoples of
the world and with due regard for their respective interests.
Section IV. Right to Culture
Article 13
Every people has the right to speak its own language and preserve and develop its own culture,
thereby contributing to the enrichment of the culture of mankind.
Article 14
Every people has the right to its artistic, historical and cultural wealth.
Article 15
Every people has the right not to have an alien culture imposed upon it.
Section V. Right to Environment and Common Resources
Article 16
Every people has the right to the conservation, protection and improvement of its environment.
Article 17
Every people has the right to make use of the common heritage of mankind, such as the high
seas, the seabed, and outer space.
Article 18
In the exercise of the preceding rights every people shall take account of the necessity for
coordinating the requirements of its economic development with solidarity amongst all the
peoples of the world.
Section VI. Rights of Minorities
Article 19
When a people constitutes a minority within a State it has the right to respect for its identity,
traditions, language and cultural heritage.
Article 20
The members of a minority shall enjoy without discrimination the same rights as the other
citizens of the State and shall participate on an equal footing with them in public life.

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Article 21
These rights shall be exercised with due respect for the legitimate interests of the community as
a whole and cannot authorise impairing the territorial integrity and political unity of the State,
provided the State acts in accordance with all the principles set forth in this Declaration.
Section VII. Guarantees and Sanctions
Article 22
Any disregard for the provisions of this Declaration constitutes a breach of obligations towards
the international community as a whole.
Article 23
Any prejudice resulting from disregard for this Declaration must he totally compensated by
whoever caused it.
Article 24
Any enrichment to the detriment of the people in violation of the provisions of this Declaration
shall give rise to the restitution of profits thus obtained. The same shall be applied to all
excessive profits on investments of foreign origin.
Article 25
Any unequal treaties, agreements or contracts concluded in disregard of the fundamental rights
or peoples shall have no effect.
Article 26
External financial charges which become excessive and unbearable for the people shall cease
to be due.
Article 27
The gravest violations of the fundamental rights of peoples, especially of their right to existence,
constitute international crimes for which their perpetrators shall carry personal penal liability.
Article 28
Any people whose fundamental rights are seriously disregarded has the right to enforce them,
specially by political or trade union struggle and even, in the last resort, by the use of force.
Article 29
Liberation movements shall have access to international organisations and their combatants are
entitled to the protection of the humanitarian law of war.

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Article 30
The re-establishment of the fundamental rights of peoples, when they are seriously disregarded,
is a duty incumbent upon all members of the international community.

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Appendix B:
International Peoples' Tribunal on Debt, Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil,
February 12, 2002
VERDICT
Convened by the international network of Jubilee South, together with the Jubilee South Brazil
Campaign, the American Association of Jurists, the Committee for the Cancellation of Third
World Debt, Kairos-Canada, Jubilee USA Network, the Southern Peoples' Ecological Debt
Creditors' Alliance, Ustawi, and the Worldwide Women's March, among many others, the
International Peoples' Tribunal on Debt was held between February 1 and 2 in Porto Alegre, Rio
Grande do Sul, Brazil, as part of the II World Social Forum. The Tribunal was promoted by the
social movements, churches, unions, professional organizations, NGOs, feminist organizations,
political parties and renowned personalities that constitute Jubilee South in 45 countries of
Africa, Asia, the Pacific, Latin America, and the Caribbean, together with the support of diverse
entities in the North.
It was convened in order to determine and rule upon the responsibility of banks and
transnational corporations, governments in the North, the International Monetary Fund, the
World Bank, and other international financial institutions, for the crime of illegitimately indebting
the countries and peoples of the South. A crime that has generated a high cost in human lives,
the destruction of our productive capacity and of the quality of life of our peoples, with increases
in poverty, infant mortality, social exclusion and grave economic and environmental damages.
In addition to ruling on evidence as regards the illegitimacy of the debt and identifying the
principal culprits and their respective roles, the International Peoples' Tribunal also assumed the
task of proposing alternatives in order to secure debt repudiation and annulment. This Tribunal
is a court of opinion rather than a court of justice. Nonetheless, it upholds the principles of
rigorous argumentation and documentation supported by a diversity of judicial and ethical
traditions. On the basis of an accusation complemented by a broad range of documentary
evidence and testimonies presented by men and women illustrative of peoples throughout the
South, expressed over the course of three sessions, the Popular Jury, integrated by persons
representative of the societies of different countries, has come to the following verdict:
CONSIDERING
1. THAT according to studies and data the debt of the countries of the South has been paid
several times over so that, in addition to being unpayable, it is also illegitimate, unjust and
immoral.
2. THAT the external debt, in addition to constituting an economic problem, is also an ethical,
political, social, historical, and environmental problem, generating responsibilities at various
levels and demanding immediate action.
3. THAT external debt payments entail a net transfer of resources from the South to the North.
In 1998, the 41 poorest and most indebted countries transferred some 1.68 billion US$ more
than they received. In that same year, the countries of the Third World contributed some

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114.6 billion dollars to the private and public coffers of the most industrialized countries of
the North.
4. THAT, between 1981 and 2000, the people of the South have transferred to the North 3.7
trillion dollars, an amount equivalent to six times what was owed that year (560 billion) even
though today more that 2 trillion is still owed.
5. THAT neo-liberal polices lead to an exponential growth in external debt, impeding the
carrying out of social policies and seriously compromising the political sovereignty of the
countries of the South.
6. THAT the unilateral decision of the United States, at the end of the 1970s, to increase
interest rates from their historical level of 46 percent to more than 20 percent over a period
of a few months, spelled a betrayal of good faith assumed in the original contracts. In
addition to forcing debtor countries to take out more debt in order to make interest
payments, this decision occasioned additional payments that in the case of Latin America
represented a loss of 106 billion dollars.
7. THAT there is a link between external debt, excessive public domestic debt, and the search
for short term external capital, all provoking very high interest rates in the South.
8. THAT governments in the South, conceiving the financial system as an end in itself,
sacrificed the parts of their budgets dedicated to social benefits and the stimulus of the
domestic economy in order to keep up payments on their financial debts, thereby
abandoning healthcare, education, employment creation, popular housing, the demarcation
and guaranteeing of land for indigenous peoples together with the conditions necessary for
their survival as peoples. Also sacrificed was the opportunity to dignify the elderly and
children, to carry out agrarian reform, to conserve and recover the environment.
9. THAT the IMF's adjustment and other economic policies proved disastrous for the countries
subjected to them, serving to increase their debt even more as well as other external
obligations, forcing a moratorium in the repayment of social and environmental debts that
are owed to children, indigenous peoples, both male and female rural and urban labourers,
black men and women, and nature.
10. THAT the indebtment of these countries was carried out by dictatorial governments, by their
very nature illegitimate and antipopular, and that the creditors not only were accomplices but
also quite aware of the risks that these loans entailed.
11. THAT the growth of the debt is also linked to the elites in countries of the South, that now as
throughout history, have been complacent with external financial institutions, both private
and public as well as with the multilateral ones.
12. THAT the countries of the North have an ecological debt with the South on account of the
historical pillaging of its resources, the intellectual appropriation of their ancestral knowledge,
for the use and degradation of its best land, water and air for export projects that affect food
sovereignty, increase the production of toxic wastes, and threaten the survival of peoples.

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13. THAT the external debt constitutes a permanent violation of economic, social, and cultural
human rights established by the United Nations in 1966, rights which demand the
recognition of the right of all peoples to their own self-determination, to economic
development as well as to dispose freely of their wealth and natural resources, and that in
no case can a people be deprived of its own means of subsistence.
THE MEMBER OF THE JURY OF THE INTERNATIONAL PEOPLES' TRIBUNAL ON DEBT
UNANIMOUSLY DECIDE:
1. The External Debt of the countries of the South, for having been accumulated outside of
national and international legal frameworks and without consultation with society, for having
favoured elites almost exclusively to the detriment of the majority of the people, and for
having hurt national sovereignty, is illegitimate, unjust and ethically, legally, and politically
unsustainable.
2. The accused banks and transnational corporations, governments of the North, the
International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other international financial institutions
and their collaborators in the South, are authors, co-authors, accomplices, and concealers of
the following crimes:
a. Draining in a parasitic manner the natural patrimony and other resources of the South in
order to meet external debt payments, abetting this political, ecological, and economic
instrument of exploitation of our peoples.
b. Upholding and favouring unequal terms of trade that also contributed to the increase in
the external debt, adding to the extraction and production of raw materials sold at very low
prices and the importing of industrial products bought at highly elevated prices, as rich
countries' subsidies further reinforced the unequal exchange regime.
c. Charging usurious interest rates that made the external debt increase exponentially,
rather than diminish, notwithstanding the regular flow of repayments from the South.
d. Carrying out fraudulent operations between large transnational banks and business
people in the South, inventing non-existent debts through the use of speculative
mechanisms that instead of favouring production, allowed the enrichment of a few as these
simulated debts were later made public debts.
e. Applying structural adjustment and other economic policies that oblige our states to
undertake privatization processes affecting the ownership of natural resources and public
utilities, and paying the debt with the money that should have been invested in social works
and for economic reactivation.
f. Supporting dictatorial or criminal regimes through loans that sustained and illicitly enriched
the dictators, notwithstanding their rejection by oppressed peoples and sanctions imposed
by the United Nations and human rights organizations.

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g. Channelling in perverse form the resources accrued through the contracting of debts,
towards the enrichment of government officials, sumptuous expenditures, and their deposit
in foreign banks, instead of using them toward social benefits.
h. Imposing economic integration programs that only favour the interests of transnational
companies and the industrial countries of the North, in violation of the fundamental individual
and collective human rights of peoples.
i. Imposing political and economic conditions of recession in debtor countries in order to
secure debt renegotiations.
j. Continuing to collect a debt that has already been paid several fold to the point of making
the people the victims of fraud.
k. Breaking international law, its norms and legal instruments, such as the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, Covenant 169 of the International Labour Organization on
indigenous peoples, the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against
Women, the right of peoples to their self-determination, among many others, as well as
national legislation.
l. Plotting among the accused to loot and exploit Third World peoples as the result of the
aforementioned crimes committed systematically.
m. Committing crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity.
The Jury thereby requests the Tribunal to dictate a sentence condemning those accused for the
commissioning of all or some of the crimes committed and indicated in this verdict. It also
requests that the External Debt be declared non-existent, and thereby extinct, for being odious,
infamous, illegal, usurious, unjust, fraudulent, and illegitimate, and for provoking the loss of
national sovereignty and the quality of life of the majority of the population of the South. Finally
the Jury exhorts the Tribunal to accept the following recommendations:

To call for unity among citizens present in this forum, all the peoples of the South, as well as
citizens of countries in the North who stand in solidarity with the peoples' cause, in order to
campaign together to achieve the repudiation and cancellation of the external debt.
Initiate sovereign processes of independent audits of the external debts of our countries, in
order to verify actual existing legal debt if indeed there is still a debt that should be repaid,
and establish participative and democratic procedures for social control over indebtedness.
Urge Parliaments of indebted countries to investigate the handling of the debt by those
responsible for generating it, in order to hold them legally accountable as warranted.
Demand the restitution of the riches extracted from the South, as well as the payment of
reparations for the damages wrought.
Demand the return to our peoples of the wealth illegitimately accumulated by the
dictatorships, corrupt governments, and transnational corporations that have been
accomplices.

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Develop Dignity and Sovereignty Campaigns that will block bilateral and multilateral
economic agreements contrary to peoples' interests, including agreements with the IMF or
other international financial institutions.
Propose to governments that they unite around this common cause and do whatever is
necessary, to solicit from the International Court of Justice in the Hague a Consultative
Opinion as regards the illegitimacy of the external debt and to suspend all payments on the
debt.
Propose to governments that these resources instead be used exclusively for programs of
sustainable development for the life of all of our peoples.
Accompany local and national processes that seek to create sustainable societies as seen
from an economic, food, energy, environmental, equality, and equitability perspective.
Support the campaign to demand payment of the Ecological Debt, an obligation and
responsibility of the states of the North, transnational corporations, multilateral banks and
other private financial institutions for carrying out environmental destruction in the South.
Deliver the conclusions of this Tribunal to the principal accused parties thus far identified,
and ask that they respond in a given amount of time.
Accompany the legal claims which, following on this verdict, co-plaintiffs may pursue against
those accused parties, fully identified and declared guilty by this Tribunal, so as to avoid that
the crimes committed remain in impunity. Denounce also the corrupt governments that
have allowed the pillaging of their peoples.
Constitute a global commission on debt with a mandate to investigate and identify all those
who are responsible for perpetrating illegitimate debt and to support initiatives to bring them
to justice.
Notify the United Nations and other regional and international bodies, demanding
consideration of the elaboration of instruments to insure that full compliance with universal
human rights takes priority over any debt-service claims.
The Jury submits the present Verdict to the Tribunal seeking justice for the peoples of the South
and for all of humanity. This is the symbolic road of a long march. This is our decision.
Publish and disseminate. Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, February 2, 2002
Members of the Jury:
Adolfo Prez Esquivel (Nobel Peace Laureate, ARGENTINA),
Dennis Brutus (Poet, SOUTH AFRICA),
Pedro Ross (Workers' Central, CUBA),
Yvonn Yanez (Southern Peoples' Alliance of Ecological Debt Creditors, ECUADOR),
Rosemary Nyerere (Member of Parliament, TANZANIA),
Marie Frantz Joachim (Worldwide Women's March, HAITI),
Samba Tembile (International Youth Camp, MALI),
Rogate Mshana (World Council of Churches, TANZANIA),
Sekou Diarra (Jubilee 2000, MALI),
Shelly Emalyn Rao (Economic and Social Research Council, FIJI).

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