UK private sector interests in fragile states

Article by Phil Bloomer

December 6, 2021

UK private sector interests in fragile states

‘Global Britain’ encapsulates broad principles and aspirations for the UK’s continued influence in the world. The Prime Minister, in his preface to Global Britain in a Competitive Age (often referred to as the Integrated Review), said: “The creation of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office is the springboard for all our international efforts, integrating diplomacy and development to achieve greater impact and address the links between climate change and extreme poverty.”[1]

A growing criticism of ‘Global Britain’ is that the aspirations, in a number of areas, are not backed up by a credible and coherent plan for implementation. Fragile states, and the precarious human rights of their citizens, are, regrettably, no exception to this criticism. The UK Government’s approach to the impact of UK business on conflict and rights in precarious societies relies heavily on the belief of a benign invisible hand of the market, and an appeal to voluntarism -‘do the right thing’ – from both responsible and unscrupulous companies. But high-risk fragile states tend to attract those looking for big rewards at any cost, even fuelling conflict and gaining cheap, pliant communities or labour through collusion with state silencing of human rights defenders.

Fragile states often present opportunities for high return on investment to key sectors of UK business, but also risks. And from the flip side, UK investment can create new jobs for the people of fragile states but also threats to their livelihoods, labour rights and land rights. The outcomes for people’s dignities and freedoms depend greatly on the intentions and approach of the UK company, the willingness of the national government to act as a fair interlocutor between the company and communities and, and the UK Government’s own commitments to uphold responsible investment and business practice.

Globalisation, and the digitalisation of the UK economy, has transformed UK business and its global supply chains. These have become truly global, intensely complex, with short-lived supplier contracts that pass risk and cost down to the poorest and most vulnerable – often women and migrant workers in factories and farms. The pandemic has exposed fragilities in these supply chains, and has exacerbated inequalities of power and wealth in the extended supply chains that characterise many UK business interests in fragile states. The Business and Human Rights Resource Centre is still supporting apparel workers across Asia to gain their unpaid wages for the clothes they manufactured for UK fashion brands in the first phase of the pandemic.

Abuse is far more prevalent in fragile states, with low governance capacities. The Business and Human Rights Resource Centre’s monitoring of abuse by global business from 2015 to July 2021 witnessed 3,303 allegations, of which over half, 1,859, were in the 32 fragile states, plus the Philippines, Colombia and Brazil.

This article seeks draw out some lessons from the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre’s global monitoring and database of human rights in business, focusing on key areas where UK business can play a key role either in building resilience, or exacerbating fragility and risk for communities and workers.

From corporate voluntarism to smart regulation and incentives

UK multinationals span the world, and many have links with fragile states. Like most of Europe and North America, the UK Government, for decades, has had a hands-off approach, relying on market forces, voluntary action, and some ‘nudge’ politics to promote responsible business conduct, even in fragile states. But the mood has shifted in the US and Europe recently regarding business incentives and regulation, and the UK risks being left behind. Increasingly the abuse of workers and communities in fragile states with poor governance, and the trafficking of workers from these states to forced labour in fields and factories in global supply chains, are no longer tolerable. The US is debating new regulatory standards and the Customs and Border Patrol have aggressively banned imports of goods suspected of being produced with forced labour. While the EU, and member states, have legislative initiatives to demand companies identify and prevent human rights risks in their operations and supply chains – a move that has special relevance to fragile states where much abuse by unscrupulous business occurs, often in collusion with the state.

Global Britain has some legal strengths to build on, including the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and UK Supreme Court judgements. There is an increasing trend of victims of corporate abuse bringing civil claims against UK companies for harm caused by their overseas subsidiaries. Recent decisions indicate UK courts willingness to accept jurisdiction in some cases. Critically for abuse in fragile states, foreign claimants’ inability to obtain sustainable justice in their home country, through lack of resources, for instance, will be taken into consideration by the UK courts when assessing jurisdiction. The UK Supreme Court’s landmark judgment in Vedanta Resources Plc and Konkola Copper Mines Plc v Lungowe and Ors held that a UK parent company does, under certain conditions, owe a duty of care to people and communities (in this case, Zambian villagers) affected by its overseas subsidiary’s operations and could be held liable for harm.[2] In this case, the Supreme Court affirmed the UK courts’ jurisdiction partly because there was a real issue to be tried and partly because “there was a real risk that the claimants would not obtain substantial justice in the Zambian jurisdiction”.

Another positive development is the UK Supreme Court’s 2021 judgement in Okpabi v Shell (concerning alleged oil pollution and damages in Nigeria).[3] The court cautioned against striking out a claim against a parent company at the jurisdiction stage (given the challenges claimants have in accessing evidence). This case will proceed to trial. This should make it easier for foreign claimants alleging parent company liability to have access to UK courts. Royal Dutch Shell is incorporated in the UK as a public limited company, with total assets of 379.3 billion USD in 2020. Shell has been operating in Nigeria since the late 1950s. The legacy the company has left in the country includes distrust and violence, environmental harm, and little to no economic development for many communities surrounding their projects. Allegations against Shell have ranged from exacerbating tribal conflict, complicity in unlawful arrests, and major pollution events.[4] In 2021, Shell was made to pay $45.7 billion naira ($111 million USD) in compensation from an oil spill from a ruptured pipeline in 1970.[5]

It is too early to assess whether increasing access to courts in the UK will actually translate into enhanced access to justice and remedy for victims of corporate abuse. To date there have been no court rulings on the merits. For example, Vedanta settled out of court in January 2021, two years after the UK Supreme Court affirmed the UK courts had jurisdiction; without admission of liability.[6] Nonetheless, this is a promising development. We can expect additional claims will be brought in UK courts going forward.

Transition minerals for clean energy futures

A number of fragile states hold key mineral wealth that is strategic to the world’s transition to clean energy. Minerals such as cobalt, copper, lithium, manganese, nickel and zinc are central to success. The International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasts a six-fold increase in production of transition minerals by 2030, for lithium it is 40-fold. Prices and production are already surging.[7] Most are concentrated in only a few states, many of which are fragile – Democratic Republic of the Congo (cobalt), Indonesia and the Philippines (nickel), and Bolivia (lithium). And even within these states, the minerals are often concentrated in the last territories of indigenous people whose nations’ existence is intimately linked to the land. Chinese mining companies prevail and are investing heavily, and the UK is being urged to build its stake in these geopolitically strategic minerals as competition heats up for future access. The quality of UK investment will be critical to the people and communities that should also benefit from this boom.

At the Resource Centre we monitor threats and attacks on Human Rights Defenders, a powerful litmus test of fragility. Unsurprisingly, over a third are linked to the extractive sector. Our survey of human rights abuse in transition mineral extraction reveals a similarly concerning picture: more than 300 serious allegations against 115 transition mineral mining companies, ranging from violence, to violation of indigenous land rights, water pollution, health threats, corruption, and a systemic failure to consult local communities.[8]

Irresponsible investments are driving conflict and polarisation. For instance, water-intensive lithium mining in the arid lithium triangle of Chile, Bolivia, Argentina and Chile, the world’s driest environment, has triggered a wave of protests and legal battles over water rights, pitching indigenous communities against multinational mining companies. Nickel production in Indonesia is driving battles over water pollution. Cobalt mining in the DRC is linked to allegations of child labour, large-scale corruption, and the funding of armed groups.

The UK Government cannot rely on voluntarism to prevent abuse. Codes such as the Voluntary Principles for Security and Human Rights encourage leading companies, but unscrupulous companies are, too often, immune to their influence. HMG should use the leadership it gained from COP26 to help build a multilateral commitment to demand companies identify and prevent risks through mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence, building on the example of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. With the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the European Union considering similar legislative initiatives, this could be low-hanging fruit if China can be persuaded to collaborate. The alternative is ballooning protest, legal challenge and loss of investor confidence, which together will act as a critical brake on projects and the fast transition.

UK Modern Slavery Act and fragile states

The conditions of fragile states create desperate people. Often facing poverty and repression, people seek routes to a better future elsewhere. Human traffickers, know these souls are a lucrative income source, and adopt strategies to funnel desperate people into conditions of forced labour.

In 2015, the UK Government established the landmark Modern Slavery Act. Its aim was to encourage global business to eradicate modern slavery. It deployed ‘nudge politics’ and voluntarism to shift companies to action on modern slavery. Section 54 requires companies to publish a statement of the steps they have “taken during the financial year to ensure that slavery and human trafficking is not taking place” in its operations or supply chains.[9] The intention was to create a ‘race to the top’ by encouraging businesses to declare their efforts to tackle modern slavery risks, and so increase competition to drive up standards for appropriate and effective response to modern slavery. There is no doubt that the Modern Slavery Act raised the profile of this issue of forced labour in many countries, but has it had an effect on UK companies’ actions to eliminate this scourge from their supply chains?

Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC) hosted the only public repository of statements – the Modern Slavery Registry – for the first six years, to 2021.[10] We assessed compliance of over 16,000 modern slavery statements of some of the largest global companies over the past five years.[11] Unfortunately, the overwhelming evidence is that the approach of the UK Modern Slavery Act has failed in its stated intentions. The provisions of the UK Act itself, based on a requirement to submit a trifling level of reporting which was not monitored or enforced, has failed to drive systemic corporate action to expunge forced labour, even in high-risk sectors. The Act has raised awareness of the prevalence of modern slavery and encouraged a cluster of leading companies and investors to do more. But ultimately, our analysis reveals no significant improvements in the vast majority of companies’ policies, practice or performance.

Despite six years of persistent non-compliance with the minimal demands of the Act by two in five (40 per cent) of companies, not one injunction or administrative penalty (such as exclusion from lucrative public procurement contracts) was applied to a company for failing to report. This stands in stark contrast to more robust approaches, such as the Section 307 of the Tariff Act in the US where goods suspected of being produced with forced labour have been banned from being imported. This has led to rapid and multi-million dollar repayment of recruitment fees to workers in conditions of forced labour by suppliers desperate to enter the lucrative US market.[12]

Critically, the Act has failed to drive systemic improvement in corporate practice to eliminate modern slavery because it does not place any legally binding standards on companies to undertake efforts to effectively address risks of labour exploitation in their business operations. In fact, the Act explicitly states a company may publish a statement that says it has taken no steps to address modern slavery risks during the financial year and still be compliant with the law. The inadequacy of the Act to protect the estimated 25 million victims of forced labour around the world has been highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has further increased the risk to workers of forced labour. The pandemic has demonstrated how systemic the causes of labour exploitation are, especially in fragile states, and the urgent need for legally binding obligations on companies – properly enforced – that go beyond weak reporting requirements.

Transparency is a necessary, but insufficient condition for systemic corporate change, even for the worst forms of labour abuse. Three policy shifts would more effectively tackle modern slavery in UK companies and their supply chains:

A new piece of legislation to impose legal liability on all companies in all sectors for a failure to prevent human rights abuses in their businesses;
The introduction of import bans for goods suspected of being produced with forced labour; and
The application of these laws to public procurement.

Migrants, forced labour and the UK’s global hotel brands

Fragile states such as Nepal and Ethiopia also seek to augment their slim GDP through the export of migrant labour around the world. Remittances can become an important source of support to impoverished communities and regions where migration by recruitment agencies is better regulated and the employers abide by good labour law. But too often unscrupulous agents charge extortionate fees for the job and travel, leading to debt bondage, and employers and franchises tolerate abuse to provide cheap and pliant labour. Insights on the toleration of forced labour in UK business’s supply chains are highlighted in our survey of international hotel brands gearing up in Qatar for the World Cup 2022. To manage the expected influx of players, supporters and the media, the Gulf state has seen exponential growth of the hotel industry, with an additional 26,000 hotel rooms brought on stream in time for the World Cup. Yet our research shows hotel brands have failed to take necessary action to protect migrant workers, who suffer serious abuses including: extortionate recruitment fees, discrimination, and being trapped in a job through fear of reprisal and intimidation. These occur despite ‘landmark’ labour reforms which promised to end the Kafala system – a fixed term sponsorship which leaves workers wholly dependent on one employer, no matter their treatment, and unable to change jobs.

The Business & Human Rights Resource Centre invited 19 hotel companies, three of them British (IHG, Whitbread, and Millennium and Copthorne), representing more than 100 global brands with over 80 properties across Qatar, to participate in a second survey on their approach to safeguarding migrant workers’ rights in the country. Our survey revealed a widespread lack of action by hotel brands to prevent and exclude forced labour.[13] This reinforced the stream of stories from workers about abuse taking place in hotels, but the survey also highlighted a cluster of companies who have shown greater leadership. IHG Hotels & Resorts is the highest ranked company, whereas Millennium and Copthorne did not respond and were ranked ‘no stars’ due to lack of relevant information on their site.

Our interviews with hotel workers revealed a shocking contrast between many hotels’ public policy commitments and their practical application or enforcement. This was particularly evident in recruitment processes, where eight out of 18 workers reported being charged high fees for jobs (the precursor to forced labour) despite the fact that only IHG provided transparent figures for the number of workers it identified had paid such fees. The interviews revealed discrimination in position and pay based on nationality and far worse treatment of subcontracted workers. Most alarmingly, almost all workers reported being scared to request to change jobs when they saw a better opportunity, with some fearful the hotels would report them to the authorities and subsequently have them deported.

Much of this points to conditions of ‘forced labour’ as defined by the International Labour Organisation (ILO). Unfortunately, the responses by brands revealed none conducted worker-centric monitoring of the conditions of subcontracted workers despite this vulnerable group often working long-term for the hotel brand. Huge profits are set to be made by the multinational and national hotel brands which will host these visitors. Meanwhile, migrant workers from fragile states in East Africa, South Asia and South-East Asia, trapped in exploitative contracts and paying back hefty recruitment debts, will serve these visitors. The good news is that the World Players Union, leading footballers, and some national football federations are demanding fair treatment in the luxury hotels, before they make their booking.

Fragile states and the pandemic

The pandemic is hitting many fragile and poor states hard. Low income countries had a two per cent vaccination rate on the September 9^th 2021, compared to 65 per cent for high income countries. The further economic disruption and social challenges that the pandemic generates are exaggerated further in fragile states by the precariousness of people’s lives and their lack of savings to cope with shocks. The after-effects are likely to last at least a decade as people try to recover from their loss of earnings, as well as friends and family.

Global Britain could be doing far more than it is to ensure its own contracts with the businesses manufacturing the viruses. The UK has enough vaccine to jab everyone five times over, and we are about to give the general population boosters, while countries such as Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Mozambique, have vaccinated a fraction of their populations with one dose.

Equally, the G7 Summit this year, chaired by the UK, was a golden opportunity to put in place a rich-country financing plan for developing countries. Yet the chance was allowed to slip away, with tragic human consequences for fragile states, and potentially for the UK too. The pandemic highlights our interconnected world. As Mamta Murthi, the World Bank’s Vice President for Human Development, has warned: “The situation that we see right now is absolutely unacceptable, because a large part of the world remains unvaccinated and this is a danger for all of us.”[14]

To meet the international targets, we need to move beyond intermittent vaccine donations to fragile and poor states to large-scale, coordinated dose-sharing. As Kevin Watkins has argued: “The EU, the United Kingdom, and the US should immediately share an additional 250 million doses – less than one-quarter of their collective surplus – through COVAX…. with a clear schedule for providing an additional one billion doses by early 2022.[15]

Conclusion

‘Global Britain’ aspires to embrace the UK’s fundamental values of fairness, care for the vulnerable, and promotion of peace and democracy. It has the potential to make this come alive in our relations with fragile states, including through the actions of responsible business. Nevertheless, the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office has a huge challenge to work across government departments to build a coherent and credible plan to realise the vision through trade and investment; business regulations and incentives, including UK tax havens; and vaccination policy. Currently the approach to fragile states appears to suffer from the same high rhetoric and low implementation that may undermine public trust in both the UK and in fragile states.

The UK could begin to demonstrate greater leadership immediately through some bold feasible actions:

Modern Slavery Act: Strengthen the modern slavery act by catching up with Australia and the US with:
- Obligations to report on mitigation measures and enforcement of transparency;
- Legal liability if these are inadequate and facilitate forced labour in supply chains; and
- The introduction of import bans for goods suspected of being produced with forced labour

Human rights due diligence: Adapt the landmark Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and the EU’s Sustainable Corporate Governance legislation, to develop a legal obligation on companies to demonstrate they have identified salient human rights risks for workers and communities in their operations and supply chains, and taken proper measures to eliminate these risks.

Revision of UK Government’s business incentives: Limit public procurement contracts and export credit guarantees to companies that both declare and report alignment with key business and human rights law; from the ILO convention on forced labour to the late John Ruggie’s UN Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights.

Just transition to clean energy: In the aftermath of COP26, seek multilateral agreements with US, China, and EU to adopt minimum standards of corporate respect for human rights across the clean energy supply chain, and especially for fragile states.

Phil Bloomer became Executive Director of Business & Human Rights Resource Centre in September 2013. Based at the Centre’s London headquarters, Phil is responsible for leading the global organisation, delivering the mission and strategic priorities, and ensuring effective management of programme, personnel, finance, and administration. Prior to joining the Resource Centre Phil was Director of Campaigns and Policy at Oxfam GB, where he was responsible for a team of 170 staff working across policy, advocacy, programme and campaigns. His team’s priorities were food justice, humanitarian protection and assistance in conflict zones, and the provision of essential health and education for all. Previously he was head of Oxfam International’s Make Trade Fair, and Access to Medicines campaigns. Prior to joining Oxfam, Phil spent 11 years in Latin America and worked on human rights dimensions of business, including in food security, resource extraction; mega-projects; and business relations with public and private security in repressive environments.

[1] HM Government, Global Britain in a competitive age: The Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy, March 2021, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/975077/Global_Britain_in_a_Competitive_Age-_the_Integrated_Review_of_Security__Defence__Development_and_Foreign_Policy.pdf

[2] The Supreme Court, Judgement – Vedenta Resources PLC and another (Appellants) v Lungowe and others (Respondents), April 2019, https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/docs/uksc-2017-0185-judgment.pdf

[3] The Supreme Court, Judgement – Okpabi and others (Appellants) v Royal Dutch Shell Plc and another (Respondents), February 2021, https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/docs/uksc-2018-0068-judgment.pdf

[4] Onome Amawhe, Long-Dead Oilfield In Nigeria Still Sows Conflict Between Shell and Communities That Watched It Grow, Forbes, November 2021, https://www.forbes.com/sites/zengernews/2021/11/02/long-dead-oilfield-in-nigeria-still-sows-conflict-between-shell-and-communities-that-watched-it-grow/; Amnesty International, On Trial: Shell in Nigeria, February 2020, https://www.amnesty.de/sites/default/files/2020-02/Amnesty-Bericht-Nigeria-Shell-on-trial-Februar-2020-ENG.pdf

[5] William Clowes, Shell to Pay $111 Million to Resolve Long-Running Oil-Spill Dispute in Nigeria, Insurance Journal, August 2021, https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/international/2021/08/17/627485.htm

[6] Leigh Day, Vedanta & Konkola Copper Mines settle UK lawsuit brought by Zambian villagers for alleged pollution from mining activities, Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, January 2021, https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/vedanta-konkola-copper-mines-settle-uk-lawsuit-brought-by-zambian-villagers-for-alleged-pollution-from-mining-activities/

[7] International Energy Agency, World Energy Outlook Special Report, The Role of Critical Minerals in Clean Energy Transitions, May 2021, https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/24d5dfbb-a77a-4647-abcc-667867207f74/TheRoleofCriticalMineralsinCleanEnergyTransitions.pdf

[8] Transition Minerals Tracker, see: https://trackers.business-humanrights.org/transition-minerals/

[9] UK Public General Acts, Modern Slavery Act 2015 – Part 6 Section 54, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/30/section/54/enacted

[10] Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, Modern Slavery Statements, https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/from-us/modern-slavery-statements/

[11] Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, Modern Slavery Statements, Briefing & Analysis Reporting, https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/from-us/modern-slavery-statements/briefings-analysis-of-reporting/

[12] Congressional Research Service, Section 307 and Imports Produced by Forced Labor, Updated May 20 2021, https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11360#:~:text=Section%20307%20of%20the%20Tariff,(CBP)%20enforces%20the%20prohibition

[13] Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, Luxury hotels check out over migrant worker abuses in Qatar, July 2021, https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/from-us/media-centre/press-release-luxury-hotels-check-out-over-migrant-worker-abuses-in-qatar/

[14] World Bank Group, The Development Podcast, ‘Absolutely Unacceptable’ Vaccination Rates in Developing Countries, Episode 17, The World Bank, August 2021, https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/podcast/2021/07/30/-absolutely-unacceptable-vaccination-rates-in-developing-countries-the-development-podcast

[15] Kevin Watkins, Ending “Trickle Down” Vaccine Economics, Project Syndicate, September 2021, https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/ending-trickle-down-vaccine-economics-by-kevin-watkins-2021-09

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Unpacking climate, development and conflict: Insights for contexts of FCACs

Article by Dr Naho Mirumachi and Marine Hautsch

Climate change and pitfalls of low carbon development

The recently concluded discussions of the COP26 climate summit highlighted that progress towards meeting the 1.5C target could not come any sooner. Rapid, decisive action has been called upon by those states and peoples affected the most. Emission cuts need to be revised and nations need to redouble their efforts at limiting temperature rise. Side events at the summit featured low carbon strategies, ranging from renewable energy expansion, addressing deforestation and low carbon agriculture plans. Low carbon development will continue to be an attractive option for developing countries whereby two objectives of enhancing economic growth and reducing carbon emissions can be met.[1]

In fragile and conflict affected countries (FCACs) climate change is one of the many factors that need to be contended with. Nevertheless, impacts from climate change can be wide-ranging and defy sectoral approaches, making it a very ‘wicked’ problem to contend with.[2] No easy solution can be found and coordinating across sectors makes for complex work. Moreover, it has been shown that doing something about climate change can cause perverse outcomes, further intensifying tensions and inflating grievances. This is because there is uneven distribution of costs and benefits from low carbon development between individuals, communities and even states.[3] The experience of low carbon development is not homogenous. Instead, it is differentiated between these actors and brings out the underlying structural inequalities, be they related to ethnicity, gender or class. In many FCACs, this is compounded by political divides and large disparities relating to poverty.

Leveraging conflict sensitive approaches

Various donors and implementing agencies have taken up the notion of conflict sensitivity to better understand how for example, development interventions, not limited to climate mitigation or adaptation, may produce harmful effects. Operational guidelines and toolboxes exist to help avert triggering violence and to fulfil the ‘do no harm’ principle.[4] The UK Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF) is noted as enhancing its practice of conflict sensitivity analysis and ensuring programmes remain dynamic to contextual changes.[5] In this article, we argue that conflict sensitivity in the context of climate and development identifies not only propensity for conflict but also helps uncover the significance of tensions emerging from development interventions. In other words, consideration needs to be given to insecurity as being a barrier to development – ranging from economic to education opportunities – as well as affecting individuals’ improvement of their own capabilities.[6]

The benefits of applying conflict sensitivity are clear. Lessons learned from past examples of investing in renewable energy show that, if conflict sensitive approaches are not taken, then existing patterns of violence are reinforced, especially in the contexts of FCACs. The Gibe III dam in Ethiopia on the Omo River is an instructive case. UK involvement in this project has been questioned over the years, as resettlement of people affected has been problematic and criticised as far from satisfactory.[7] As a large-scale renewable electricity infrastructure located upstream of Lake Turkana, there has been an array of contestations over the costs and distribution of benefits.[8] There is controversy that the dam does not supply the energy needs of local households and thus does not serve much-needed rural electrification. It has also been claimed that the irrigation benefits from the dam are being used for cash crop production for one of the world’s largest sugar cane plantations instead of food staples in a region facing food insecurity. [9] There are multiple ethnic groups who rely on a range of livelihoods including fisheries, pastoralism and small-scale farming in this region, and a history of conflict over access to water involving small arms.[10] The project brought to the fore trade-offs between water, energy and food security that were not accurately considered in the environmental and social impact assessment (ESIA) of the project.

The impacts of the dam are not merely technical calculations about water, energy and food security but require contextualised analysis embedded in local security issues. The dam impacted water levels, which had cascading effects for local livelihoods and ecosystems: it intensified water scarcity for the 300,000 individuals who rely on the lake’s resources.[11] This production of scarcity was wrapped up in armed violence between ethnic groups—there are a reported 17 ethnic groups in the Lower Omo Valley (Ethiopia) and Lake Turkana (Kenya)–, which further exacerbates competition for resources.[12] Despite this existing condition of instability, there was a problem of inclusion of communities’ concerns.[13] The trade-offs of dam construction needed to be understood through the interests of the communities relying on the Omo River and Lake Turkana.

Furthermore, applying conflict sensitivity perspectives extends to understanding transboundary implications. The construction of the dam inevitably resulted in withdrawal of water from the lake. This had knock-on effects on cross-border movements of the semi-nomadic groups affected and increased conflict, which spilled across the Kenyan border as they sought water and pasture. The ESIA neglected integrated costs of the project, especially its transboundary impact of Lake Turkana water availability.

The Gibe III dam project resulted in variegated costs and benefits for different stakeholders. Had a conflict sensitive lens been applied rigorously at the planning and implementation stage, there would be opportunities to consider not only avoidance of conflict repercussions but also enhancing project benefits for inclusive development.

Taking long-term views on development consequences

Good intensions can nevertheless result in harm, when actions towards adaptation can inadvertently place more burden. This is called ‘maladaptation’, which places disproportionate burden on those most vulnerable or incurs high opportunity costs.[14] Low carbon development projects that end up being maladaptive pose additional challenges. In FCACs, these actions can be problematic because they entrench existing tension and produce new vulnerabilities. It has been found that maladaptation impacts existing inequalities but also pose future risks as well.[15] Examples of modernisation of agriculture in places like Sub-Saharan Africa have showed that they can lead to environmental degradation, further resource conflict or exasperating livelihood conditions for those who are landless.[16]

Seemingly ‘successful’ interventions may not disrupt existing conditions of peace; they can maintain the status quo of conflict without causing regression. However, low carbon development in the form of infrastructure can pose challenges in the long term. Large-scale projects like the dam highlighted above have socio-economic and ecological impacts that manifest over time. Even small-scale projects can have impacts down the line. For example, in a case of mini solar grid expansion in the Turkana region in Kenya, which was funded by then-Department for International Development (DFID), it was found that the design and location of adaptation projects highly determine those who benefit from the investment in infrastructure.[17] While there is no overt conflict at this stage, instalment of infrastructure restricts pathways of how, when, where and at what price community members access green energy in the future. In FCACs, establishing long-term views are particularly challenging but needed when considering the heightened vulnerability of communities.

Scrutinising winners and losers

Just as with any kind of development, low carbon development creates winners and losers. Technical assessments of project impacts are often void of the qualitative outcomes to individuals. Here the notion of absolute and relative winners/losers is helpful to give a sense of the lived experiences of impacts. Absolute winners and losers refer to groups or individuals that experience gains or costs compared to their own status quo before the project. In contrast, relative winners and losers emerge through a comparative look across different groups or individuals.[18] For example, a relative winner is identified when other groups bear more costs of the project. A relative loser may not be worse off but nevertheless does not benefit from the project.

The absolute or relative nature matters because it sheds light on perceptions of individuals regarding their gains and losses induced by a project.[19] Furthermore, these perceptions can trigger contestations and thus a barrier to the implementation, much less success of a project.[20] Conflict sensitivity can better incorporate these grounded insights of absolute and relative winners/losers.

The largest wind power project in Africa is a case in point. The Lake Turkana Wind Farm in Kenya has been lauded as a ‘catalyst’ for renewable energy production.[21] With a capacity of 310 MW and over 300 turbines, it represents Kenya’s ambition towards securing green energy as well as private investment opportunities, which includes British investment companies as the largest shareholder.[22] But this project has been marred by delays and legal cases, with domestic and international concern about the negative impacts. In court, it was ruled that the land acquisition process was illegal, having dispossessed indigenous communities from their land.[23] Clearly, local communities are absolute losers in this regard, with the project company as an absolute winner having benefited from the land acquisition process. Furthermore, the subsequent impacts of realising the wind farm generates relative winners and losers in employment. Jobs were handed out to those of the Turkana tribe, whereas proportionally fewer workers from the Samburu ethnicity were employed; both tribes have been affected by displacement, along with several other groups.[24] In a context of existing tensions between pastoralist groups in this region, the creation of relative winners and losers adds to rivalries and hostility.

Intersecting climate change and security

The COP26 discussions called for urgent action in the face of climate crisis. The underlying narrative presents this future crisis as dangerous and calamitous. There is no denying that many individuals will suffer the consequences of droughts, flash flooding and sea level rise. But this narrative should not be used as an excuse to label countries and regions – particularly of the Global South – as violent, irresponsible or doomed to insecurity. The concerns of climate security are bound up in issues of migration, terrorism and other factors pointing to the fragility of a state. These concerns can reveal some deeply problematic assumptions about risks and threats emerging from ‘ungoverned spaces’ of insecurity.[25] Such notion underlies the geopolitical order that distinguishes the Global South as the ‘other’ and shapes the need for development assistance or humanitarian aid as mechanisms to maintain this geopolitical configuration.[26]

Rather than seeing regions or states as a faceless entity of danger or risk, there needs to be more attention paid to the vulnerable and marginalised individuals who are at the sharp end of climate impacts. The everyday is where climate and security intersect. The everyday struggles of maintaining a livelihood, the prevalent challenges of accessing clean water and recurrent blows to the way of life are real and pressing. Any kind of support towards climate mitigation and adaptation needs to consider their vulnerabilities.

Charting the way forward for UK engagement in FCACs

Predicting conflict or peace is not easy. There are no simple linear causations between climate change, conflict and various development programmes, whether for adaptation or mitigation. There is no guarantee how UK engagement will impact FCACs amidst multiple climate, political and socio-economic uncertainties. Nevertheless, it is possible to glean two key insights from experiences of low carbon development. First, there is a significant need to monitor how engagement affects conflict dynamics or contributes to peace. As the above sections highlighted, this monitoring needs take into consideration the qualitative impacts to individuals and over the long-term. Conflict sensitive approaches need to be maintained and revisited throughout programming.

Second, any kind of climate action needs to be embedded in broader development agendas and plans. The urgency to tackle climate change should not blinker the debate and efforts towards addressing the underlying structures of poverty, inequality and marginalisation. The inadvertent and perverse impacts of low carbon development show that a critical and integrated approach is needed to consider security and vulnerability. As the examples above showed, security considerations must include local, regional and transnational scales. In addition, understanding vulnerability requires multi-sectoral perspectives that include livelihoods, food, water and energy. A comprehensive view to climate, development and conflict can provide a more robust justification of the UK’s engagement in FCACs.

The Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy published earlier this year sets out ‘Global Britain’ and its vision of a values-driven foreign policy. The UK’s commitment towards a ‘force of good’ needs to be founded on deep understanding of these complex intersections across climate, development and conflict. Importantly, the Government needs to continually ask ‘force of good’ for whom through its engagement in FCACs.

Dr Naho Mirumachi is Reader (Associate Professor) in Environmental Politics at the Department of Geography, King’s College London, UK. She leads King’s Water, an interdisciplinary research hub on water, environment and development. Her research focuses on the politics and governance of water resources, particularly in developing country contexts. Her research extends to issues of water diplomacy, water security and socio-political barriers to water sustainability. With over 15 years of experience, she has published extensively and is the author of Transboundary Water Politics in the Developing World (Routledge 2015) and Water Conflicts: Analysis for Transformation (Oxford University Press 2020). Naho recently served as lead author on freshwater policy for the 2019 UN Environment GEO-6 report and currently working on the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report.

Marine Hautsch holds an MSc degree in Environment and Development from the Department of Geography, King’s College London. She is currently a research assistant working with Dr Naho Mirumachi on a Swedish Research Council funded international project on ‘Conflict Prevention and Low-Carbon Development: Opportunities for promoting and sustaining peace through renewable energy projects’.

Image by Dean Calma/IAEA under (CC).

This work was supported by Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development Formas 2017–01941 Conflict Prevention and Low-Carbon Development: Opportunities for promoting and sustaining peace through renewable energy projects.

[1] Urban, F. 2010. The MDGs and beyond: Can low carbon development be pro-poor? IDS Bulletin, 41(1), 92–99; Mirumachi, N., Sawas, A. and Workman, M. 2020. ‘Unveiling the security concerns of low carbon development: climate security analysis of the undesirable and unintended effects of mitigation and adaptation’, Climate and Development, 12(2), pp. 97–109. doi: 10.1080/17565529.2019.1604310.

[2] Rittel H and Weber M, ‘Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning’, Policy Sciences, Vol 4, No 2, June, 1973, pp 155-169.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Anderson, M. B. 2004. Experiences with Impact Assessment: Can we know what Good we do? In Transforming Ethnopolitical Conflict (pp. 193-206). VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden.

[5] HM Government, Conflict, Stability and Security Fund: Annual Report 2019/20, January 2021, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/956538/FCDO0044_CSSF_Report_2019-20_v4.pdf

[6] Adano W.R., Dietz T., Witsenburg K., and Zaal F. 201.) “Climate change, violent conflict and local institutions in Kenya’s drylands”, Journal of Peace Research, vol 49 (1): 65-80; Sen, A. 2009. The Idea of Justice. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.

[7] John Vidal, EU diplomats reveal devastating impact of Ethiopia dam project on remote tribes, The Guardian, September 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/03/eu-diplomats-reveal-devastating-impact-of-ethiopia-dam-project-on-remote-tribes

[8] Abbink, J. 2012. ‘Dam controversies: contested governance and developmental discourse on the Ethiopian Omo River dam’, Social Anthropology, 20(2), pp. 125–144. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-8676.2012.00196.x; Hodbod, J. et al. 2019. ‘Social-ecological change in the Omo-Turkana basin: A synthesis of current developments’, Ambio, 48(10), pp. 1099–1115. doi: 10.1007/s13280-018-1139-3.

[9] Hodbod, J. et al. 2019

[10] Human Rights Watch, “What Will Happen if Hunger Comes?” Abuses against the Indigenous Peoples of Ethiopia’s Lower Omo Valley, June 2012, https://www.hrw.org/report/2012/06/18/what-will-happen-if-hunger-comes/abuses-against-indigenous-peoples-ethiopias#:~:text=The%20Ethiopian%20government%20is%20forcibly,the%20Gibe%20III%20hydropower%20project

[11] Carr, C. 2012. Humanitarian catastrophe and regional armed conflict brewing in the transborder region of Ethiopia, Kenya and South Sudan: The proposed Gibe III Dam in Ethiopia. Berkeley, CA: Africa Resources Working Group (ARWG).

[12] Leslie Johnson, Kenya Assessment – Ethiopia’s Gibe III Hydropower Project Trip Report (June – July 2010), Mursi Online, July 2010, http://www.mursi.org/pdf/USAID%20July%202010.pdf; Mara Budgen, Gibe III dam disastrous for indigenous Ethiopians and Kenyans. “We can’t eat electricity”, Lifegate, October 2015, https://www.lifegate.com/gibe-iii-lower-omo-valley-lake-turkana

[13] Abbink, J. 2012.

[14] Barnett, J. and O’Neill, S.J. 2013. Minimising the risk of maladaptation: a framework for analysis. In: Palutikof, J.P. et al. (Eds.) Climate Adaptation Futures, pp.87-94. Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell.

[15] Magnan, A. K., Schipper, E. L. F., Burkett, M., Bharwani, S., Burton, I., Eriksen, S., and Ziervogel, G. 2016. Addressing the risk of maladaptation to climate change. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 7(5), 646–665. doi:10.1002/wcc.409; 25

[16] Asare-Nuamah, P. et al. 2021. Farmers’ maladaptation: Eroding sustainable development, rebounding and shifting vulnerability in smallholder agriculture system. Environmental Development, 40, 100680; Mikulewicz, M. 2020. Disintegrating labour relations and depoliticised adaptation to climate change in rural São Tomé and Príncipe. Area. https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12630

[17] Lomax, J., Osborne, M., Aminga, V., Mirumachi, N., and Johnson, O. 2021. Casual pathways in the political economy of climate adaptation: winners and losers in Turkana, Kenya solar mini-grid projects. Energy Research & Social Science, 8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2021.102296

[18] O’Brien, K. L. and Leichenko, R. M. 2003. Winners and losers in the context of global change. Annals of the association of American geographers, 93(1), 89-103

[19] Ibid.

[20] Abbink, J. 2012.

[21] David Whitehouse, Kenya’s Lake Turkana points the way forward for African wind power, The Africa Report, July 2019, https://www.theafricareport.com/15832/kenyas-lake-turkana-points-the-way-forward-for-african-wind-power/

[22] Dr. Edward Mungai, British Companies Emerge Biggest Investors In Kenya’s Wind Farms, Africa Sustainability Matters, February 2020, https://africasustainabilitymatters.com/british-companies-emerge-biggest-investors-in-kenyas-wind-farms/

[23] Louise Voller, Vestas’ wind farm in Kenya is the country’s largest green investment ever. Now a court has declared it illegal, Danwatch, November 2021, https://danwatch.dk/en/perspektiv/vestas-wind-farm-in-kenya-is-the-countrys-largest-green-investment-ever-now-a-court-has-declared-it-illegal/; Cormack, Z., & Kurewa, A. 2018. The changing value of land in Northern Kenya: the case of Lake Turkana Wind Power. Critical African Studies, 10(1), 89-107; Achiba, G. A. 2019. Navigating contested winds: Development visions and anti-politics of wind energy in Northern Kenya. Land, 8(1), 7

[24] Kazimierczuk, A.H. 2020. Tracing inclusivity: Contribution of the Dutch private sector to inclusive development in Kenya. Case study of Unilever Tea Kenya Ltd., the flower sector and Lake Turkana Wind Power project, Thesis (PhD) Leiden University.

[25] Hartmann, B. 2010. Rethinking climate refugees and climate conflict: Rhetoric, reality and the politics of policy discourse. Journal of International Development, 22(2), 233–246. doi:10.1002/jid.1676; 18

[26] Mirumachi et al. 2020.

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United Kingdom

The importance of Gender in FCACs and the wider Women, Peace and Security Agenda

Article by Helen Kezie-Nwoha

The year 2020 marked 20 years of the landmark United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325(UNSCR1325) on women, peace and security.[1] Since then nine additional Resolutions have been adopted to reinforce the original agreements contained in UNSCR1325. There have been global commitments to ensure that these Resolutions are implemented at national level, through the development of National Action Plans (NAPS). As of August 2021, 98 countries globally have developed NAPs.[2] The United Kingdom (UK) was one of the first few countries to develop the NAP in 2006 and is currently implementing the fourth generation NAP (2018 – 2022).[3] The UNSCR1325 and its related resolutions constitute the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, which all provide the guidelines for addressing the impact on conflict on women and ensure women and girls participation in decisions around response to war impact and in all peacebuilding processes. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the role of the UK in promoting the WPS agenda, lessons learnt and the overall effectiveness of its interventions. The second is to assess how gender fits into the UKs recent Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy.

UK’s role in the WPS agenda

The UK’s approach in promoting the WPS agenda following its development of the first generation NAP has focused on preventing conflict related sexual violence. It took the lead role in profiling the need to address sexual violence in conflict, provide training to ensure peacekeepers understand sexual gender based violence and its impact on women and girls, as well as ensure perpetrators are held accountable. In 2012, the UK led the global effort to end conflict related sexual violence by launching the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative (PSVI). This was followed by a global conference that brought together about 120 world leaders and civil society activists. The conference ended with a commitment by the Foreign Secretary to move from pledges to actions to end sexual violence in conflict. In the same year, the Protocol for the documentation and investigation of sexual violence in conflict was launched, aimed to ensure enough evidence for accountability. A follow up conference was planned but could not be held due to COVID-19 restrictions.

The other area of focus of the British Government has been the role of women in violent extremism. In 2015, the Government created the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF) to tackle instability overseas, the CSSF replaced the Conflict Prevention Pool. In the 2016-17 plan, £500,000 was set aside by the FCO to ensure programme activities and research focus on increased understanding of women as victims, perpetrators and preventers of violent extremism. Building on its global leadership, in 2018 the Government allocated about £3.4 million to address sexual violence in conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Myanmar, Columbia and Iraq, it also responded to the Rohingya crises as one of the largest donors contributing £129 million to humanitarian response. In addition to these contributions, the UK has demonstrated its global leadership on the WPS agenda by promoting women’s participation in peace processes and women and girls’ issues at the World Humanitarian Summit in May 2016. The UK contributed towards addressing sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) by UN Peacekeepers through support for the UN outreach project to victims of SEA in the DRC and Central Africa Republic (CAR), including supporting the International Peace Support Training Centre in Kenya and strong support to the UN Secretary General’s agenda for reform. Following on from this, the UK played a significant role in supporting the adoption of the voluntary compact between Troop Contributing Countries (TCC) and the UN with respect to SEA, with the UK Prime Minister the first to join the Secretary General’s informal circle of leadership on SEA and also pushed for UNSCR2272, which allows for the repatriation of peacekeeping contingents where SEA is found to be widespread and systemic. The UK contributed £1.6 million towards amplifying the voices of women peacebuilders; launched a global call to action to drive lasting progress on gender equality by supporting education for women and girls in situations of conflict; endorsed the Safe School Declaration in April 2018; supported women’s mediators network across the Commonwealth; and ensured voices of women at the Security Council were heard (for example a female civil society representative from Iraq addressed the UNSC in 2018).

The UK NAPs progressively increased the countries of focus from initial three to nine in the current NAP (Afghanistan, DRC, Iraq, Libya, Myanmar, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Syria). At the national level, the UK NAP has focused on training and awareness of the armed forces on the rights of women and girls in conflict settings, enhancing policy coherence, improving the representation of women in armed forces, the inclusion of equality markers to all programmes in the CSSF and declaring gender equality funding for the CSSF.

Despite the impressive leadership role exhibited by the UK Government, there remain areas that require strengthening to ensure the UK plays its leading role on the WPS agenda as well as to effectively ensure women and girls in conflict benefit from the huge investments. An ICAI review of the PSVI found that the most significant achievement of the initiative is the Protocol on the Documentation and Investigation of Sexual Violence in Conflict, which has been used to access justice for survivors in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Columbia, the DRC, Myanmar, Syria, Uganda and Iraq.[4] The review noted that, despite efforts by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) to provide leadership at global and national level and convening countries to address sexual violence in conflict, the PSVI from the start lacked a strategic vision or plan that could have driven the initiative. Over time ‘high level ministerial interest waned’ and funding and staffing levels reduced, leaving the PSVI lacking a system of monitoring impact that makes it difficult to track progress or results from programmes implemented. GAPS latest assessment of the implementation of the WPS noted that even though the Government played a key role in the development and adoption of the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) it continues to export arms to countries who have used weapons indiscriminately against civilian population.[5] Experience shows that such actions against civilians impact women and girls most. The report also noted the need for the NAPs to look inward and extend its commitment to Northern Ireland, refugees and asylum seeking migrants and trafficked women and girls from fragile and conflict affected countries.

Gender and the Integrated Review

Following the UK’s departure from the EU, the Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy became an important action by the Government to carve a way forward for its foreign policies.[6] The overall aim of the review is to increase commitment to security and resilience to ensure British people are protected against threats, focused on territorial integrity, building critical national infrastructure, strengthening democratic institutions, and reducing the threat from states, terrorism and serious and organised crimes (SOC). The Review proposes four areas of focus of the strategic framework, including sustaining strategic advantage through science and technology; shaping the open international order for the future; strengthening security and defence at home and overseas; and building resilience at home and overseas. As with many Government policies, gender within the review document is an ‘add on and paste’ approach, there is no evidence that a gender analysis informed the review and proposed actions. However, there is a priority action to promote gender equality, which is believed to be enough for gender responsiveness. One of the significant gaps in the Review is the lack of analysis and inclusion of WPS. This takes away the opportunity to streamline the UK’s commitment to promoting the rights of women and girls in conflict. With this in mind, this paper will zoom in on the second area of the strategic framework: ‘A force for good: supporting open societies and defending human rights’, and more specifically on two priority actions that align more closely with gender, women, peace and security: to defend universal human rights and to promote gender equality.

The Integrated Review recognises that open societies are crucial building blocks in a sustainable international order, modelling inclusive, accountable and transparent governance. It also notes that such open societies and individual liberties on which they are built are under pressure in the physical and digital world. As rightly pointed out by the Integrated Review there is general decline in global freedom with autocracies becoming stronger and more influential. The UK plans to work with its global allies, like-minded partners and civil society worldwide to protect democratic values, and to achieve this it is important to start at home. The proposed actions to achieve this require further interrogation, but before then I would like to point out that the democratic values being promoted need to be clearly defined by the UK and agreed with the partners who it plans to support. This is because democratic values are defined and understood differently by different countries and most have defined their values based on their desire to move away from colonial legacies which the UK represents. It must also be noted that many democracies in Africa for example have failed and continue to struggle because colonial powers imposed the Western model of democracy, which was problematic to adapt with existing cultural traditions and leadership styles of the people. In addition, the African states have failed to fulfil the social contract that could have enhanced their legitimacy, with the majority of the countries having weak economies with high corruption and a lack of accountability. Going forward the UK Government needs to recognise the norms and values of democracy and ensure collaborative ways of improving democracy to determine and agree on the nature of support to be provided.

I now turn to the proposed priority actions: to defend universal human rights and to promote gender equality. The UK plans to promote human rights by using an independent sanctions regime to hold accountable those who violate human rights. The sanctions regime was established in 2020 which enables the UK to hold accountable those who violate human rights by imposing targeted asset freezes and travel bans. Asset freezing is an efficient preventive measure and has been effective in fighting terrorism, however the nature of human rights violations experienced by women, including conflict related sexual violence and sexual and gender based violence which is usually committed in the home and in public institutions, will not benefit from asset freezing as perpetrators usually remain in country and may not even have any assets that would warrant such actions. It would be more beneficial for the UK to assess the nature of human rights violations experienced by women in the context of shrinking civic space and during the COVID-19 pandemic to find appropriate strategies, such as supporting transparent and efficient justice systems to ensure justice for victims of human rights violations and in the case of building back better after COVID-19 ensure girls and women’s participation in post COVID-19 plans and actions. There is a need to focus on a victim-centred approach to addressing human rights violations.

The other priority area is to promote gender equality. To achieve this, the UK plans to work with women’s rights organisations (WROs) to address the root causes of gender equality including discrimination, violence and insecurity. The strategy to achieve this priority is to ‘use aid spending and diplomacy to pursue the goal of getting 40 million more girls into school in low and middle income countries by 2025, starting with the Global Partnership for Education Summit in 2021’.[7] As well as promote women’s economic empowerment at the WTO, G7, OECD, the UN and World Bank and in the UK’s free trade agreement (FTA). The review rightly identified some of the root causes of gender inequality as discrimination, violence and insecurity but missed out other factors that have facilitated gender inequality including social norms and practices and unequal power relationship between women and men.

While education is an important strategy to achieve gender equality, it would require other strategies running in tandem to ensure that the structural barriers to girls’ education is eliminated, this is applicable to so called peace times and in fragile and post conflict settings. In South Sudan, barriers to girls’ education include unfavourable sociocultural attitudes and practices that prevent girls from enrolling, being retained and completing school. The context in South Sudan where most people live below the poverty line instigates families to marry off their girls to acquire resources. In addition, early marriage and pregnancy result in higher levels of maternal and infant mortality. Other factors that prevent girls’ education include preference for educating boys instead of girls who will be married off, insecurity and cost of education. Some of these factors are sociocultural and require actions towards behavioural change and changes in cultural practices. If this is not done, despite the investment and good efforts to ensure girls are in school, it may not yield any significant change. In the COVID-19 context, when many countries have used locked down measures to curtail the spread of the disease, many girls have been married off or impregnated by strangers and relatives in some cases. In Uganda, UNICEF reported that between March and June 2020 there was a 22.5 per cent increase in pregnancy among girls aged ten to 24 years.[8] To promote gender equality, the Government must apply an intersectional approach to address the underlying factors that prevent girls’ education.

The ongoing discussion indicates that the UK Government speaks more than it can actually do, the strategies proposed at all fronts, whether at the implementation of the NAPs, the review process and the general commitment to taking the lead in promoting gender equality globally, do not match the commitments. A recent aid cut to research on issues of gender equality and women’s empowerment indicates the lack of political will to achieve the stated commitments. Feminist academics and women peace builders have raised concerns that women and girls worldwide are under threat of violence as a result of the aid cut by two-thirds. This action has been qualified as ‘backsliding’ on the Government’s commitment to promote gender equality. The UK Government claims that the cut is due to the need to respond to the economic impact of COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the reasons articulated, the aid cuts undermine its commitment to be a ‘force for good’ and take the lead in achieving gender equality globally, which further impacts on the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. At a time when the world is grappling with the impact of COVID-19 on women and girls, there has been significant impact on women and girls in fragile and conflict affected countries, the UK must take a leadership role building on existing partnership to ensure that ‘building back better’ means girls and women’s needs and their participation in all rebuilding processes are prioritised.

The UK has shown evidence of its commitment to promoting gender equality and the WPS agenda through progressive frameworks and investments towards achieving set objectives. However, there is a disconnect between what is planned and how the plans are implemented. I would recommend the following:

The UK Government should strengthen its capacity to ensure it is able to address the gender gaps in its planning, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation of policies and plans. This will enable proper documentation of progress achieved and enable effective response to existing gaps;
Ensure all plans and policies are reviewed to mainstream gender, women, peace and security for coherence, synergy and sustainability of this agenda in all government’s programmes and policy commitments; and
The UK should use its experience and position as ‘a force for good’ to influence the global agenda on gender, women, peace and security.

Helen Kezie-Nwoha is the Executive Director of Women’s International Peace Centre an international feminist organisation that works on promoting the Women, Peace and Security agenda in Africa. Helen has over 20 years- experience working on women’s rights, gender, peace building, conflict resolution and governance in Nigeria, Liberia, South Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Uganda and Nepal. She has managed international and regional programmes; led advocacy efforts at international, regional and national levels specifically in Africa and Asia. Helen has researched women’s war experiences in several conflict affected countries in Africa.

Image by Amanda Voisard/UN Women under (CC).

[1] United Nations Security Council, Resolution 1325 (2000), October 2000, https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N00/720/18/PDF/N0072018.pdf?OpenElement; OSAGI, Landmark resolution on Women, Peace and Security, UN, https://www.un.org/womenwatch/osagi/wps/

[2] 1325 National Action Plans (NAPs), see: http://1325naps.peacewomen.org/

[3] FCDO, Ministry of Defence and CSSF, UK National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security 2018 to 2022: report to Parliament 2020, Gov.uk, April 2021, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-national-action-plan-on-women-peace-and-security-2018-to-2022-report-to-parliament-2020

[4] Tamsyn Barton, The UK’s Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative, ICAI, January 2020, https://icai.independent.gov.uk/review/psvi/

[5] GAPS UK, Assessing UK Government Action on Women, Peace and Security in 2020, April 2021, https://gaps-uk.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/GAPS-Shadow-Report-2020.pdf

[6] Cabinet Office, Global Britain in a Competitive Age: the Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy, Gov.uk, March 2021, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/global-britain-in-a-competitive-age-the-integrated-review-of-security-defence-development-and-foreign-policy

[7] FCDO, Every girl goes to school, stays safe, and learns: Five years of global action 2021-2026, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/986027/FCDO-Girls-Education-Action-Plan.pdf

[8] Daily Monitor, Back to School: Addressing Key Issues Post COVID, September 2021, https://adrauganda.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/ADRA-News-13-September-2021.pdf

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United Kingdom

A ‘Force for Good’? – Conclusions and Recommendations

Article by Tim Molesworth and Adam Hug

This collection of essays has looked at the ways in which the UK’s foreign policy engagement in FCACs is adapting to changes in the global foreign policy environment, the evolving nature of conflict and to changes in the UK’s institutional capacities and its place in the world.

The nature of conflict in FCACs is shifting, along with the challenges they present the UK. The number of violent conflicts today is as high as at any point since the end of World War II, only matched by a period in the early 1990s. Unlike the 1990s, however, we are not seeing a parallel rise in peace agreements. This is at least partly due to the transnational impacts on conflict, including transnational crime, violent extremism, climate change, migration and, since 2020, COVID-19. It is also due to a tendency towards the increasing internationalisation of conflicts. While conflict still play out within borders, a larger number of international actors are directly or indirectly involved – increasing the complexity of conflict resolution processes and the number of stakeholders who need to be considered and included.

The effect on the UK of this is of strategic importance. FCACs pose threats to international peace and security, undermining the stability of neighbouring countries. FCACs can provide ungoverned spaces in which transnational terrorist networks can develop and which can facilitate transnational crime. The situation in FCACs drive displacement, including refugee flows and other irregular migration into neighbouring countries and, ultimately, towards Europe and Britain. FCACs also provide a space for geopolitical competition, which the UK’s geopolitical competitors are able to exploit for strategic advantage, to develop partnerships or to disrupt the geopolitical status-quo. The UK, then, must be proactive in its engagement in FCACs, not only for its own security interests, but because supporting governments and communities in FCACs to resolve conflict and transition to a sustainable peace is the right thing to do and constitutes an obvious responsibility under the UK’s ambitions to be a ‘force for good’.

As the UK’s strategic priorities change, increasing its focus on the Indo-Pacific and European Neighbourhood and reducing it in large parts of Africa and the Middle East, it will be important for the UK to ensure that its change in posture is managed carefully so as not to further destabilise FCACs. Wherever possible this should include retaining capacity and engagement in contexts crucial for the UK’s ‘force for good’ agenda beyond its priority regions wherever possible and adopting a more coherent approach to conflict sensitivity that should applied across the range of the British engagement with all FCACs.

The UK has significant experience and expertise engaging in FCACs. As one of the most significant international donors, it has invested in the tools and capacities needed to understand conflict and leverage cross-government tools and resources to deal with conflict strategically. However, the UK’s approach to the world and its capacities to do so are changing. The 2020 Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy outlines a strategic framework for how the UK engages with the world. It indicates a more joined up and strategic approach between the foreign policy tools which the UK has available. Recent institutional changes, including the merger of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and the Department for International Development (DFID) into the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), provide an opportunity to more explicitly develop that joined up approach – particularly when dealing with complex, multidimensional problems such as those driving conflict in FCACs.

However, it also comes with risks. Relating to FCACs, the Integrated Review calls for more focused and ‘politically smart’ interventions aimed at addressing drivers of conflict. This reflects language and perspectives such as the Elite Bargains and Political Deals work of the UK’s former Stabilisation Unit (now incorporated into a new conflict unit within the FCDO). These perspectives have a lot of value, in so far as they are intended to inform how aid and other foreign policy tools can contribute to peace in complex political economies. There is a risk, however, that a focus on elite bargains will end up deprioritising the longer-term structural peacebuilding contributions which are necessary to help countries transition to sustainable peace. It suggests a higher tolerance for engaging with national actors who do not necessarily act in ways that are compatible with the values which the UK espouses, an approach that needs to be used strategically but sparingly, while remaining committed to more integrated and long-term approaches to building sustainable and equitable peace.

The publication makes the case for an integrated, conflict sensitive approach to the UK’s approach to the world both inside government and beyond. As well as building in a conflict sensitivity due diligence approach such as the conflict sensitivity tool outlined in the introduction across the full range of UK Government engagement in FCACs, it means also ensuring, as Helen Kezie-Nwoha writes, that gender analysis be made a more integral part of the UK’s policy development, informing all aspects of policy rather than being an ‘add on and paste’ approach as she puts it. She also rightly points out that the UK’s approach needs to be cognisant of and responsive to local dynamics, particularly in post-colonial contexts. As Kezie-Nwoha puts it ‘this is because democratic values are defined and understood differently by different countries and most have defined their values based on their desire to move away from colonial legacies which the UK represents’, noting the regular failure to make Western style institutions work within local cultural frameworks and leadership models, which have led to issues of corruption, weak legitimacy and poor accountability.

Similarly, Dr Naho Mirumachi and Marine Hautsch highlight the need for conflict sensitivity both in dealing with the impact of climate change and ensuring that future green infrastructure does not replicate problems of previous international investments that have exacerbated local conflict dynamics (citing the Gibe III dam in Ethiopia and solar grid expansion in the Turkana region of Kenya as examples of poorly thought through green investment). Climate action needs to be fully integrated as part of, rather than in competition with, wider strategies to address the underlying structures of poverty, inequality and marginalisation that can fuel conflict. Phil Bloomer’s contribution widens this point out to argue that the UK’s wider economic engagement with fragile and conflict affected countries needs to be conflict sensitive and comply with international best principles for business and human rights.

A number of authors, including Fred Carver and Rt Hon. Andrew Mitchell MP, have rightly made the case that the UK has an important role as a leader and convenor within multilateral institutions (including the UN, Commonwealth and NATO) if it chooses to continue to take this approach. A commitment to partnership at an international level must be matched with a commitment to building and resourcing local partnerships with civil society and peacebuilding, boosting from the ‘bottom-up’ as Dr Alexander Ramsbotham and Dr Teresa Dumasy argue.

For a country reliant on its soft-power to project its influence, perception and trust are key. The UK must, as it considers how to engage in the world moving forward and how to operationalise the strategic vision outlined in the Integrated Review, ensure that it stands by its stated ambition to be a ‘force for good’ in the world. This is particularly important in FCACs, where the ways the UK engages can demonstrate, perhaps most starkly, the degree to which it acts in accordance with the values it promotes.

The individual essays in this collection include a wide variety of policy recommendations regarding the particular areas of UK foreign policy engagement to which they relate. Some of the key recommendations include that the UK should:

Embed consideration of conflict sensitivity and the myriad direct and indirect ways in which its activities can worsen or address conflict into decision-making relating to all areas of UK engagement in FCACs, not just within aid projects where it has made significant progress but across HMG. It should look to embed a structured way of approaching conflict sensitivity due diligence to assess and mitigate the potential impact of interventions.

Ensure that its approach to engaging in FCACs puts peace in a central role. Wherever possible peacebuilding and peacemaking should not be in competition with other UK policy priorities for fragile and conflict-affected states, but at the heart of them; addressing violent conflict is often a precondition for advancing sustainable stability, and it is not always an inevitable product of other policy interventions without a clear focus on making it so.

Be willing and able to use a wide range of policy tools to assist in its conflict resolution and peacebuilding objectives including diplomacy, sanctions, aid, trade, military engagement (including peacekeeping), peacebuilding resources (both inside Government and in civil society), mediation (in appropriate contexts), and reform of private sector involvement in FCACs.

Find the correct balance in its aid activities between efforts aimed at promoting stability, for example through elite bargains and political deals, with the need also to address the structural drivers of violent conflict. ‘Politically smart’ aid should look to create the opportunities, through stability, to then allow for longer-term structural change which is necessary for the evolution of like-minded peaceful societies the UK would like to see.

Strengthen its peacebuilding and conflict resolution capacity. This could include:

- - Bringing in more specialist expertise from the peacebuilding sector into government, building on the existing secondment systems for senior academics and by opening up recruitment;
  - Improving coordination and information sharing across government and with external experts;
  - Enhancing embassy and FCDO operational capacity, helping find ways for the UK to support smaller, local peace actors rather than relying on multilaterals or large private consultancies;
  - Enabling local programming to become more responsive to evolving local situations and incorporating the learning developed through ongoing project delivery;
  - Providing more settled priority setting and guidance to the CSSF, and
  - Allowing for longer project timelines for peacebuilding work beyond the yearly budget cycle.

Leverage its strong convening capacity to build international coalitions, as the UK can rarely act alone in FCACs. It should use its ability to consider conflict from a wide range of perspectives in government, to multiply its impact by seeking to influence and shape the collective effort of international aid and other actions towards peace.

Address the gender gaps in its planning, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation of policies and plans, ensuring that they mainstream gender, women, peace and security priorities in all government programmes and pledges. It should maintain its commitment to influence the global agenda on gender, women, peace and security.

Use its position on the UN Security Council and involvement with the policy conversations to push for:

- - - Greater accountability to, and centring of, the communities at the heart of peacekeeping missions;
    - To resist any urge for state-based mechanisms to micromanage peace operations;
    - To resist state centricity in multilateral responses to areas of fragility and embrace the fact that states can often themselves be part of the problem and non-state actors part of the solution; and
    - To counter any attempt to have UN resources or UN supported missions diverted into counter-terror operations, counterinsurgency, or other forms of warfighting.

Strengthen the conflict sensitivity of UK private sector activities, by strengthening the modern slavery act, introducing new legal responsibilities for companies that failing to prevent human rights abuses, corruption or that fuel conflict in FCACs and strengthening conflict and human rights sensitivity compliance in public procurement.

Improve compliance with the principles of the Arms Trade Treaty and strengthen due diligence checks on both the direct use of arms sold and on the indirect consequences of the arms trade. It should provide clearer red lines on arms sales and military collaboration with conflict actors.

Prioritise partnership in its engagement in FCACs. Partnership is key to effective peacemaking and peacebuilding – conflict is too complex and systemic for any one country or institution to tackle single-handedly. Working authentically in local partnership is the hardest, but most important challenge for UK Government and civil society alike to achieve our peace ambitions.

Embed understanding of the links between climate change, peace and conflict into its wider work on climate change. It should ensure that its work on climate change is conflict sensitive, taking into account the ways in which the necessary economic transformation for responding to the climate crisis can embed or address structural drivers of conflict.

Address the role of the UK and its Overseas Territories as facilitators of international corruption that can be a key driver of conflict in FCACs.

Tim Molesworth is the Senior Advisor for Conflict Sensitivity and Peace Technology at the Peaceful Change initiative, a UK based peacebuilding NGO. He has 11 years’ experience working with the UN and NGOs in contexts such as Iraq, Syria, Sudan and Libya on strategic approaches to peacebuilding and conflict sensitivity.

Adam Hug became the Director of the Foreign Policy Centre in November 2017, overseeing the FPC’s operations and strategic direction. He had previously been the Policy Director at the Foreign Policy Centre from 2008-2017. His research focuses on human rights and governance issues particularly in the former Soviet Union. He also writes on UK foreign policy and EU issues. He studied Geography at the University of Edinburgh as an undergraduate and Development Studies with Special Reference to Central Asia as a post-grad.

Image by FCDO under (CC).

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Why does the “lodestar of democracy” not promote justice and accountability regarding Iran?

Article by Drewery Dyke

October 22, 2021

Why does the “lodestar of democracy” not promote justice and accountability regarding Iran?

Between November 10^th-14^th 2021, activists and human rights groups will hold a people’s tribunal to examine who was responsible for gross human rights violations that took place in Iran in November 2019. In September 2021, Redress presented the UK Foreign Secretary with an appeal to impose targeted sanctions on Iranian officials. What is the back story and how should the UK Government react?

On October 3^rd 2021, the recently-appointed United Kingdom (UK) Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss, told a conference of members of the governing Conservative Party that “Britain has always been a lodestar of freedom and democracy”.[1] She said that “we will build a network of liberty across the globe”, stating that “the democratic world order faces a stark choice” and that “either we retreat and retrench in the face of malign actors or we club together and advance the cause of freedom.” We need, she asserted, “to rise to meet this moment”.

Why, then, did Britain not act in unison with or follow the European Union (EU) in imposing human rights-rooted, targeted sanctions on eight Iranian government officials and three prisons when the EU did so in April 2021?

Why does the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO, the UK’s Foreign and overseas aid Ministry) appear to show little interest in initiatives aimed squarely and advancing justice and holding human rights violators from the Islamic Republic of Iran to account?

Where does the FCDO now stand on the dossier presented in September to the UK Government by the Free Nazanin campaign and REDRESS, supported by victims of hostage-taking in Iran calling for sanctions on specific Iranian officials or the calls by Justice for Iran to impose sanctions on 35 officials set out in the organisation’s February 2020 report Shoot to Kill: Preliminary Findings of Justice for Iran’s Investigation into the November 2019 Protests (pp. 30-38) or indeed the International People’s Tribunal on Iran’s Atrocities of November 2019, or Aban Tribunal, to be held in Westminster, London, November 10^th-14^th 2021?[2]

Activists, alongside Justice for Iran, Iran Human Rights and ECPM – Together against the Death Penalty have mandated a group of renowned international lawyers and jurists to examine evidence and witnesses’ accounts relating to gross human rights violations that took place in Iran between November 15^th-18^th (called Aban in Persian) 2019.[3] Numerous sources, including the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, the UK scholar, Javaid Rehman, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have set out their assessments of the events of November 2019 in their work.[4]

When the UK left the EU on January 1^st 2020, it incorporated into (post-Brexit) UK law all human rights-related sanctions on specific individuals and entities agreed as an EU member. In respect to Iran, this included those enacted from 2011 and reviewed annually. As of July 2019, the EU had imposed targeted, specific sanctions on 82 individuals and one entity.[5] The European Commission’s annual review in 2020 produced no change, but in April 2021, the Commission identified a further eight individuals and three entities – each a prison.

But whereas the UK has aligned itself with pivotal EU foreign policy decisions, say in relation to sanctioning Belarus leaders following state violence carried out following the disputed August 2020 presidential election, it did not do so in relation to Iran.

It has appeared to drag its feet since then. Why?

The irreversibility of International justice and accountability mechanisms

In 2020 the international accountability toolkit expanded in the EU and UK: in July 2020, the UK’s Global Human Rights Sanctions Regulations 2020 (GHR) entered into force followed in December 2020 by the EU’s Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime.[6]

The world has reached an international justice point-of-no-return and if the UK wishes to join the club – as the UK Foreign Secretary said it does – to “advance the cause of freedom”, the FCDO needs “to rise to meet this moment”.

The growing number of targeted sanctions regimes – those on individuals rather than whole countries – represent the globalisation of the United States’ (US) 2012 Magnitsky Act. Named for the Russian auditor and tax expert, Sergei Magnitsky, in 2009 he exposed fraud totalling $US230 million. Russian officials detained him on charges of collusion to commit tax fraud, but in November 2009 he died in pretrial detention in Moscow just eight days before he would have either had to be put on trial or released.[7] As a result of a campaign led by financier Bill Browder, then President Barack Obama enacted the US Congress bill carrying Magnitsky’s name.[8] It provides for the imposition of restrictions upon named individuals in respect to travel and access to US-based or owned financial services for credible reasons based on the named individuals’ violations of human rights standards or corruption, features retained by the UK, EU, Canadian and other, analogous, provisions. Person(s) and entities designated under the Act can challenge the designation, a feature likewise retained in the provisions enacted in other jurisdictions.

These measure reflect growing international awareness and acceptance of forms of international justice and accountability bookmarked by the 1945-6 Nürnberg (Nuremburg) trials.[9] In recent decades hybrid courts have been established to investigate and prosecute large-scale crimes under international law in countries which have gone through conflict or crisis, such as Bosnia, Cambodia and Sierra Leone. Likewise, the ad hoc International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and that for the former Yugoslavia, both now closed, prosecuted atrocities committed in those countries. With its establishment in 2002, the International Criminal Court (ICC), the international community created a permanent court to “investigate and prosecute people suspected of committing genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and (since 2018) the crime of aggression in situations where national authorities are unable or unwilling to act genuinely.”[10]

Significantly, however, the universal is now also the national: the prosecution by national courts of crimes under international law – wherever the alleged acts may have happened – is increasingly routine. Based on the principle that individual states have a duty to protect the international community or international order itself by prosecuting such cases, one such is the case against former Iranian official Hamid Noury, in Sweden. It shows that alleged crimes from 1988 in one state can be successively prosecuted in 2021 in another.[11]

The thirst for justice that this case represents is what drives Richard Ratcliffe. Islamic Republic of Iran security officials arbitrarily detained his wife Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe in 2016 and as of September 23^rd 2021, marked 2,000 days of unjust detention.[12] Since her detention, the Iranian authorities have unjustly detained at least three others, Anoosheh Ashoori, Morad Tahbaz and Mehran Raoof, in what some commentators term ‘hostage diplomacy’.[13]

It is also what drives those who face enormous risks to take part in November 10^th-14^th 2021 International People’s Tribunal on Iran’s Atrocities of November 2019 – the Aban Tribunal, which will allege that political and security leaders of the very highest echelon actually ordered people to be shot, killed, maimed or tortured.[14] Details of the alleged acts and their perpetrators can be viewed at Justice for Iran’s Faces of Crime website.[15]

The thing is, the justice and accountability toolbox now contains the means to advance justice. If the Iranian (or any other) government will not hold alleged perpetrators of gross human rights violations to account, we can demand justice elsewhere.

What should the UK and other governments do now?

It is time for Liz Truss to “rise to meet this moment”.

The FCDO should address, openly, the appeal made by the Free Nazanin campaign and REDRESS, supported by victims of hostage-taking in Iran.[16] What does it say? What does the FCDO propose to do about it? Why not tell the House of Commons? Why not invite Iran experts to an open consultation to examine the ramifications?

The UK Government – and every single government that respects the rule of law and seeks to uphold international law – should sign up (via Eventbrite) to send observers to the Aban Tribunal.[17] Come listen to eye and material witnesses; and expert witnesses. Let the suffering and injustice you hear shape your governments’ policies. Open your toolbox to hold violators of human right to justice; if you cannot do that, then impose targeted sanctions on them.

The thirst for justice and human dignity demands action.

Image by Aban Tribunal.

[1] Liz Truss, Foreign Secretary, The network of liberty, CPC21 Speeches, Conservatives, October 2021, https://www.conservatives.com/news/the-network-of-liberty

[2] REDRESS, The Free Nazanin Campaign and REDRESS Call for Magnitsky sanctions on Perpetrators of Iran’s Hostage-taking, September 2021, https://redress.org/news/the-free-nazanin-campaign-and-redress-call-for-magnitsky-sanctions-on-perpetrators-of-irans-hostage-taking/; Justice for Iran, see website: https://justice4iran.org/; Justice for Iran, Shoot to Kill!, Preliminary Findings of Justice for Iran’s Investigation into the November 2019 Protests, Submission to the Council of the EU, February 2020, https://justice4iran.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/SHOOT-TO-KILL-Preliminary-Findings-of-Justice-for-Irans-Investigation-into-the-November-2019-Protests.pdf

[3] Justice for Iran, see website: https://justice4iran.org/; Iran Human Rights, see website: https://www.iranhr.net/en/; ECPM, see website: https://www.ecpm.org/en/

[4] UN General Assembly, Situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Javaid Rehman, July 2020, https://undocs.org/pdf?symbol=en/A/75/213; Amnesty International UK, Iran: mass torture following brutal crackdown of November protests – new report, September 2020, https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/iran-mass-torture-following-brutal-crackdown-november-protests-new-report; Human Rights Watch, Iran: No Justice for Bloody Crackdown, February 2020, https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/02/25/iran-no-justice-bloody-crackdown#:~:text=(Beirut)%20%E2%80%93%20Iranian%20authorities%20have,Human%20Rights%20Watch%20said%20today.&text=The%20government%20imposed%20a%20near,from%20November%2015%20to%2019

[5] Council Regulation (EU) No 359/2011 of 12 April 2011 concerning restrictive measures directed against certain persons, entities and bodies in view of the situation in Iran, EUR-Lex, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A02011R0359-20190709

[6] UK Statutory Instruments, The Global Human Rights Sanctions Regulations 2020, July 2020, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2020/680/made; Official Journal of the European Union, Legislation 410 I, December 2020, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=OJ:L:2020:410I:FULL&from=EN

[7] Mike Eckel, U.S. Settles Magnitsky – Linked Money Laundering Case On Eve Of Trial, RFE/RL, May 2017, https://www.rferl.org/a/magnitsky-prevezon-u-s-settlement-6-million/28483793.html

[8] Bill Browder, see website: https://www.billbrowder.com/

[9] Britannica, Nurnberg trials, Last updated October 2021, https://www.britannica.com/event/Nurnberg-trials

[10] Amnesty International, International Justice, https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/international-justice/

[11] Justice for Iran, Timeline of Hamid Noury’s Trial, September 2021, https://justice4iran.org/15730/

[12] Amnesty International UK, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe: What’s Happening?, October 2021, https://www.amnesty.org.uk/nazanin-zaghari-ratcliffe-whats-happening

[13] Stephen M. Walt, Why ‘Hostage Diplomacy’ Works, Foreign Policy, February 2021, https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/02/17/why-hostage-diplomacy-works/

[14] Aban Tribunal, see website: https://abantribunal.com/

[15] Faces of Crime, see website: https://facesofcrime.org/

[16] Gov.uk, Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/foreign-commonwealth-development-office; REDRESS, The Free Nazanin Campaign and REDRESS Call for Magnitsky sanctions on Perpetrators of Iran’s Hostage-taking, September 2021, https://redress.org/news/the-free-nazanin-campaign-and-redress-call-for-magnitsky-sanctions-on-perpetrators-of-irans-hostage-taking/

[17] Aban Tribunal, see website: https://abantribunal.com/

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Global Britain for an open world? – Executive Summary

Article by Adam Hug and Devin O'Shaughnessy

October 19, 2021

Global Britain for an open world? – Executive Summary

Open societies around the world and the international system that supports them are under growing threat. This publication provides detailed analysis and practical ideas for how the UK can meet this challenge with a ‘renewed commitment to (being) a force for good in the world-defending openness, democracy and human rights’ necessary for ‘shaping the open international order of the future’.

First, Britain must be consistent in its principles both at home and abroad. It must tackle corruption in the UK and its territories, protect the independent institutions crucial for its soft power and avoid restrictive new legislation that will harm human rights at home and undermine them internationally.

As part the UK’s new approach to the world it should seek to be ‘Doing Development Democratically’ (DDD), a long-term integrated approach that understands the UK’s impact on countries and incentivises change through a ‘Democracy Premium’. UK engagement should build on a core of tackling corruption, promoting the rule of law and protecting media freedom, mutually reinforcing areas that can underpin a wider change to political cultures and quality of governance. The UK needs to be more outspoken in defence of open societies – bilaterally and multilaterally – both in public and private, using all the tools available to it, even as UK aid has been cut back. Working with like-minded donors, partners in the global south, and civil society the UK needs to seize democratic opportunities as they arise and protect progress in the regional leaders that can influence others.

Key Recommendations

The UK must get its own house in order. A programme of domestic reform should include:
- Delivering a beneficial ownership register for property; reforming and better resourcing Companies House, the National Crime Agency, Serious Fraud Office and HMRC; and transforming or abolishing Scottish limited partnerships;
- Rethinking and revising the Police, Crime, Courts and Sentencing Bill and the Elections Bill over restrictions to the right to protest and vote; and
- Protecting the UK’s soft power strength and avoiding undermining UK institutions so that the UK can act as a ‘Library of Democracy’, a democratic resource for the world.
The UK should commit to ‘Doing Development Democratically’. This should include:
- Acting with ‘Democratic Sensitivity’ by understanding the impact of UK decisions on a country’s democracy, seeking to do no harm and instead supporting openness;
- Creating a ‘Democracy Premium’ of incentives for governments committed to democracy and human rights. Offering additional foreign aid, trade preferences, international development finance, security guarantees, debt relief, technical support, diplomatic engagement and access to international agreements;
- Responding to emerging opportunities for reform by delivering a ‘Democratic Surge’ of political, practical and financial support to buttress democratic openings; and
- Ensuring women’s political leadership plays a central role in the upcoming International Development Strategy and other FCDO policies.
The FCDO should invest in UK election observation capacity, including a rapid response fund and push countries harder to deliver reforms on the basis of observation reports.
Ambassadors and Ministers should speak out more on human rights abuses and use Magnitsky sanctions to go after abusers.
The UK should support open data by creating ‘Digital Open Champions’ to drive reform at home and making it a key plank of its approach to aid and international regulatory bodies.
Support the development, funding and mobilisation of the International Fund for Public Interest Media and the establishment of a Global Fund for the Rule of Law.
Invest in UK democracy building capacity through a new Open Societies Fund, which could be delivered by a consortium of British NGOs and organisations (Team UK).
Ensuring the UK has clear commitments to show leadership at the Summit for Democracy.

Adam Hug became the Director of the Foreign Policy Centre in November 2017, overseeing the FPC’s operations and strategic direction. He had previously been the Policy Director at the Foreign Policy Centre from 2008-2017. His research focuses on human rights and governance issues particularly in the former Soviet Union. He also writes on UK foreign policy and EU issues. He studied at Geography at the University of Edinburgh as an undergraduate and Development Studies with Special Reference to Central Asia as a post-grad.

Devin O’Shaughnessy is the Director of Strategy and Policy for the Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD), responsible for advancing WFD’s strategic direction and providing technical leadership to its programmes and policy work. He has over 20 years’ experience in the field of international development, with expertise in democracy and governance, legislative assistance, civil society strengthening; electoral processes and observation; citizen participation; state building in fragile contexts; and inclusive politics. Before joining WFD, he worked for the National Democratic Institute (NDI) for nearly six years in Washington, DC, Indonesia, and Afghanistan. He has a Master’s degree in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).

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Examining the importance of open societies to the UK’s ‘force for good’ ambitions

Article by Adam Hug and Devin O'Shaughnessy

This publication comes at a moment of transition for UK foreign policy as Britain seeks to put into practice the Government’s Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy (Global Britain in a Competitive Age) and shape its future engagement with the world. The Integrated Review set the objective of the UK ‘shaping the open international order of the future’ as part of its strategic framework and made a ‘renewed commitment to the UK as a force for good in the world – defending openness, democracy and human rights’.[1] The Government now faces the task of fleshing out its approach to key priorities such as open societies, international development and soft power as well as developing its country level decision-making, building both on past practice and the direction set by the Integrated Review, while needing to work with partners across UK society to achieve its objectives.

2021 has seen the UK convene the leaders of the G7 in Cornwall and will shortly host the COP26 Climate Change Conference in Glasgow before participating in the Biden-led Summit of Democracies. The Summit is in fact two summits a year apart – taking place virtually in 2021 and in person in 2022 – with work expected to be done to deliver on commitments and operationalise new partnerships in the year between. While the importance of open societies was on the agenda at the G7, through the 2021 Open Societies Statement, there is a lot more to do to deliver the necessary response to a changing world where authoritarian powers are gaining influence.^[2]

The global challenge

The COVID-19 crisis has not only dominated the international landscape for the last 18 months but has provided new opportunities and technologies for the extension of powers used by Governments to control their populations in both democracies and autocracies. The impact of the COVID crisis has further exacerbated the existing problem that the cause of liberal democracy and open societies has been in retreat for at least a decade and a half, as noted by Freedom House’s 2021 Freedom in the World Report (Democracy Under Siege) and in many of the essay contributions in this collection.[3] There has been a retrenchment by authoritarians, backsliding from countries that had once been making progress (such as Hungary, Poland, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh) and challenges at the heart of longstanding democracies such as the United States.

In the West, enthusiasm for democracy is in significant decline, as existing systems struggle to deliver for their citizens in the challenging economic conditions since the 2008 financial crisis.[4] Notably among young people, there is greater appetite for ‘strong’ leaders over protection of rights, increased radicalisation, and plummeting trust in government institutions (particularly political parties and legislatures).^[5] Many fragile and least developed states – such as Iraq, Afghanistan, DRC, and South Sudan – have received billions in democracy assistance funding over decades with minimal results, undermining people’s confidence in the value of these efforts.

Since 2012, particularly under Xi Jinping’s leadership, China has been increasingly assertive both within its region and globally to push back against liberal democratic norms. Russia has continued to actively promote ‘traditional’ socially conservative values, particularly in its immediate neighbourhood, and engage in covert interference in elections. As addressed in James Rogers’ essay both Russia and China are increasingly using disinformation and the manipulation of social media to fuel polarisation and undermine confidence in democratic systems across the globe. China in particular has significantly ramped up its investment in ‘autocracy promotion’, with foreign officials from many dozens of countries across every region receiving training from China on online ‘information management’.^[6] The behaviour of both countries has raised increasing concerns, both regionally and globally, because of disregard for treaty commitments (such as in Hong Kong or the South China Sea), through their actions towards their neighbours (Georgia, Ukraine), or because of threats to international norms in the areas of cyber security or copyright. At times aided and abetted by Western approaches in response to the war on terror both countries have been able to promote narratives around state security and countering extremism (supported by institutions they lead such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation) that have been widely applied to peaceful critics of ruling regimes.[7]

However, even if Western politicians wished to engage in cold-War re-enactment as a response to China’s rise, Russian spoiling and the actions of other authoritarian states, it would be far harder to quarantine them from the international system (than in the days of the Soviets) given their greater integration into the global economy. To fully isolate them would be fraught with difficulty given the need for collaboration to address the existential global threats posed by climate change, biodiversity loss, and COVID-19 response. A degree of decoupling may be possible, as evidenced by the decision to exclude Huawei from the telecoms networks of several countries, rethinking around the involvement of Chinese state firms in the nuclear industry, and efforts to reduce reliance on Russian gas (for both climate and energy security reasons).[8] Yet these steps, along with welcome measures such as individual Magnitsky sanctions and anti-corruption tools such as Unexplained Wealth Orders (UWOs), are unlikely to lead to a wholesale change of approach from Russia, China, and other authoritarians growing in confidence. It is important to recognise that through financial (such as China’s Belt and Road Initiative), diplomatic (for example China’s sponsorship of the G77 group of developing countries at the UN) and security (such as Russia’s alliances and military intervention) means these states have significant global influence that shape the global balance of power. So with punitive measures somewhat limited in scope, the response from countries who support human rights, liberal democracy and good governance needs to place a greater emphasis on ways to proactively and positively promote the principles that underpin open societies and to support and defend measures to implement them in practice.

The case for open societies has to be a holistic and integrated argument that looks at the full range of benefits they bring to the fulfilment and flourishing of human capabilities. The economic benefits of an open society and the link between open societies and open economies made in the Integrated Review needs to be seen as part of a larger picture. This is not least because the precise linkages are contested, including around correlation and causation, with different perspectives outlined in this publication. The record of certain types of authoritarian systems (China and Vietnam today, Singapore and South Korea in an earlier era) that are able to curb some of the kleptocratic and nepotistic urges that underpin most autocracies towards goals of national self-development should dispel any magical thinking around a linear relationship between economic and political openness. However as the essay from Kim Eric Bettcher from Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) shows, there remains a strong correlation between openness and economic success. This positive correlation is not necessarily due to the extent of the private sector in the economy per se, but more to do with the institutions of open governance, rule of law and a pluralistic political environment.[9] Together, these institutions can support an open economy and prevent it being dominated by kleptocratic interests that capture control of economic opportunities, whether they be in the private sector or state-controlled firms.

In these troubled times, economic opportunity needs to be married with economic justice, greater opportunities and ensuring ordinary people have a stake in the economy. Otherwise, the causes of open societies and liberal democracy are unlikely to withstand erosion by populism. The right of independent trade unions and economically focused civil society groups to organise, hold the powerful to account and to mobilise civic activism is essential both to any coherent conception of open societies and to delivering more socially just outcomes. So when considering the link between open societies and open economies, there should be a focus from policymakers on institutions that empower citizens and rules that encourage public participation, enforced without fear or favour to ruling elites. This journey is far from complete even in established democracies.

The recent collapse of the Western-backed Government in Afghanistan and the return of the Taliban to power 20 years after the events of 9/11 has been a further blow to the prestige of the United States and its Western Allies. The collapse triggered belated soul searching about the effectiveness of international efforts to build state institutions and nurture democratic structures in a country blighted by conflict throughout those two decades (and for decades beforehand). While failures in Iraq and Libya had already turned public opinion against using force to achieve political and humanitarian goals, the Afghanistan debacle has further underscored questions over the West’s sticking power in the face of persistent adversaries and the challenge posed by ungoverned and poorly governed spaces. Rt Hon. Alistair Burt in his essay makes a hugely important point that ‘bad governance and corruption allow other actors into the space of delivering services, and again worldwide, insurgent movements and criminal gangs from the Sahel to Latin America gain influence over local populations by becoming the authority figures, before turning those populations either to their own ideologies or simply a shield against those who seek to reassert the monopoly of authority a legitimate government must possess.’

The UK’s role in defending open societies

The Integrated Review and past research by the Foreign Policy Centre (FPC) and Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD) have made clear that as the UK is ‘a middle power with an internationally focused economy and set of strategic assets, it is of critical importance to show support for shared and applied international rules and a system where the (global) balance of power remains with fellow democracies.’[10] The UK has benefited enormously from a rules based international system (or perhaps more accurately systems) that supports open societies, based on a presumption of the goal of liberal democracy, human rights, the rule of law, and free trade, combined with multilateral institutions that seek to protect these rights.[11] However, it is clear that this system that has been fragmenting and weakening as openness has declined in many nations around the world and both authoritarian and regional interests have become more assertive in international diplomacy. For countries like the UK that value open societies and open economies, it is clear that democracy and human rights should be seen as global public goods, which serve both national interests and global resilience. Therefore the UK and its allies must play an active role in shaping a future international order that delivers those public goods and while helping strengthen the development of well governed open societies at a country level. In the wake of some of the wrangling over the terms of Brexit and the Northern Ireland protocol, the UK should examine ways to show the international community that it is still willing to be bound by rules based frameworks if it wishes to encourage other countries to do the same.

At time of writing the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) is developing new departmental strategies and processes for the recently merged department that will flesh out the vision provided by the Integrated Review and include new thinking on how to support open societies and international development.[12] This work must seek to create some clear and measurable objectives for the UK’s Open Societies Agenda which is likely to be focused on freedom of thought, expression, religion and belief; respect for human rights, including for women and girls; media freedom; a strong civil society underpinned by inclusive, democratic political and legal institutions; and resilience to corruption and illicit finance. This work also needs to fully examine the tools available to the FCDO and across Government to help achieve them, including how to use not only diplomacy but the UK’s soft-power, trade and both Official Development Assistance (ODA) and non-ODA support (including debt relief and commercial lending) to support open societies and the desire to be a force for good in the world.

The Integrated Review described the UK as a ‘soft power’ superpower and this is a capability that needs to be nurtured and supported given that soft power has been a significant part of the UK’s approach, both directly and indirectly, to values promotion over recent decades. The FCO’s draft Soft Power Strategy highlighted the value of strengthening the UK’s offer in the realm of democracy, human rights, and rule of law. The Strategy, and the 2014 House of Lords Report Persuasion and Power in the Modern World that helped inform it, noted that this engagement is often most effective when it is done independent from government. Evidence is also clear that soft power takes many years to create and is best built on a foundation of long-term trust – particularly in a realm as sensitive as politics, elections, and governance. As noted in DFID’s Guide to Working with Parliaments and Political Parties, ‘if development programmes are serious about creating sustainable changes to the performance of parties and parliaments they need to accept that this will take time, and design programmes accordingly.’^[13]

Domestic political wrangling around the future of the BBC and the higher education sector have the potential both to hamper the UK’s soft power attractiveness that builds on such institutions and to provide succour to illiberal populists such as Victor Orbán and authoritarians seeking to reign in independent institutions in their countries. The UK’s role as a global centre of legal expertise, recognised as a soft power strength by the Government, should not mean it has to play host to attempts to bury international journalists and activists in legal costs through libel tourism and Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs).[14] The UK’s position as a global hub for NGOs and campaigning organisations dedicated to supporting open societies, a significant source of the country’s soft power, risks being weakened due to a mix of aid cuts and increasing attempts to circumscribe the activities of campaigning organisations.[15] FPC research published ahead of the Integrated Review’s launch made the case the UK should build on, rather than weaken, its soft power resources to play the role of a ‘Library of Democracy’, a globally connected soft power hub and resource centre to support the cause of open societies around the world.[16]

In order to advocate effectively for open societies, human rights and liberal democracy internationally the UK has to make sure its house in in order at home. Authoritarians around the globe are quick to pick up on any perceived hypocrisy or precedent provided by the West to justify or contextualise their actions, making the issue of maintaining internal and external consistency very important. To that end, as Joe Powell notes in his essay, progress has been delayed on implementing the anti-corruption measures needed to tackle the UK’s central role in international kleptocratic networks, exposed once again by the recent Pandora Papers. Much has also been written by experts and civil society (including the FPC) on the extent to which authoritarian state actors have been able to influence political activity and issues in the UK as highlighted by the Intelligence and Security Committee’s Russia Report.[17] With a raft of sensitive UK domestic pieces of legislation in the offing, including the Police, Crime, Courts and Sentencing Bill and the Elections Bill, there are a number of area of concern around protecting open societies at home.^[18] As Powell points out the UK has been added to the Civicus global civil society watchlist for the first time ever in September 2021.^[19]

The UK has yet to show a particular willingness to condition its approach to trade with conditions that prioritise the promotion of human rights (or for that matter political, environmental or social rights) as a key part of its strategy. There is definitely more that could be done to integrate these agendas, particularly given the new Foreign Secretary Liz Truss’s previous role as trade secretary, though there remains civil society concern that it may be more likely that foreign policy priorities are reshaped to better fit the UK’s trade promotion agenda than the other way around. Indications of greater UK interest in advancing the business and human rights agenda under new Foreign Secretary are however encouraging.

The need for partnership working has been an important part of recent FPC and WFD research around how the UK can deliver on its force for good agenda.[20] It is important not to neglect regional bodies with a role to play in human rights such as the OSCE and Council of Europe, and there remains a need to find a new modus operandi for collaborating with the EU on shared objectives. However, it is clear that the UK would like to develop new bilateral and multi-country arrangements to meet specific objectives, for example building on recent UK-Canada Cooperation on Media Freedom and on diplomatic communiqués such as the G7 Open Society Statement. When identifying other likeminded partners to help it best meet its open society priorities, the UK should work with other OECD democracies – including members that are increasingly proactive in defending democracy internationally such as Japan, South Korea, Chile, Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, and the Netherlands. These efforts should also pull in developing democracies in equal measure when developing joint initiatives, as these countries often carry particular weight in their regions, and send a powerful message that open societies are not just a Western agenda, but a human one.

Doing Development Democratically and the ‘Democracy Premium’

Much has been written about the Government’s decision to reduce its ODA spending from 0.7 per cent of GDP to 0.5 per cent, which will only be reversed under the current Government if certain economic tests are met. This a rapid and hugely consequential cut exacerbated by certain long-standing financial commitments to multilateral bodies, which necessitates larger cuts elsewhere, particularly in bilateral aid. There are further concerns that the UK may pursue a technical manoeuvre to reclassify IMF special drawing rights as ODA, further restricting the real money that the UK has available to support its open society and international development objectives.^[21] This approach has already led to sweeping cuts to UK projects around the world and media reports have suggested it could equate to an 80 per cent cut in funding for the FCDO’s thematic work on open societies and human rights.^[22] A further consequence of the (broadly positive) drive to devolve more spending decision-making to local Embassies is a likely reduced focus on thematic and multi-country work streams, with the potential loss of best practice learning from comparative study and cross-country engagement.

So with financial capital increasingly limited, the FCDO and the Government as a whole should seek to be more explicit and specific about the areas where it is willing to spend a greater amount of political capital in defence of human rights, governance and democracy so that stakeholders and the public can hold it to account. There is a need for integrated cross-governmental campaigns using the full range of tools set out above to try to achieve its open society priorities in these straightened times.

Irrespective of the wider case for and against the merger of DFID and the FCO, if the process is delivered successfully, it does provide an opportunity for greater integration and coherence between development and human rights objectives. Graeme Ramshaw, WFD’s Director of Research and Evaluation, has argued that ‘the UK has long espoused democracy as a fundamentally British value, yet we have never made it a central theme of our aid policy. Contrary to much perceived wisdom, there need not be a trade-off between development and democracy – much of the evidence suggests they are mutually beneficial. Both can be pursued concurrently if the UK adopts an approach of ‘doing development democratically.’’^[23]

‘Doing development democratically’ (DDD) will look different in each context, but has four fundamental components:

Committing to a DDD approach – ideally over a long-term period and in collaboration with other international stakeholders – with strong strategic, evidence-based, and cross-governmental underpinnings;
Investing in stand-alone democracy assistance programmes that strengthen bedrock democratic principles, institutions, practices, and skills, and ensure that any reforms are locally owned and led by a wide range of national stakeholders;
Acting with ‘democratic sensitivity’, an understanding that any UK initiative conducted in or with a country will interact with its political systems and that such interaction may have positive or negative effects for its democratic health. The UK Government should take a deliberate and systematic approach to understanding the impacts of its actions.^[24] It should seek to ensure that foreign assistance programmes at a minimum, do no harm to a country’s democracy, and ideally strengthens it by reinforcing local ownership, good governance, transparency, accountability, inclusion, and respect for human and democratic rights; and
Creating a ‘Democracy Premium’ of clear and visible incentives for governments showing a demonstrated commitment to democracy and human rights, by offering additional foreign aid, trade preferences on more beneficial terms, enhanced access to international development finance, security guarantees, debt relief, technical support, diplomatic engagement and participation in sought after international and regional agreements (disincentives for backsliding should also be considered).[25]

When adopted and implemented together, each component complements the others, creating a virtuous circle that can advance both developmental and democratic outcomes.

The first component acknowledges that this approach requires political nous, cooperation, and commitment to succeed. Short-term, simplistic approaches will not work in political contexts that not only are by their nature fluid and unpredictable, but will cause stakeholders to adapt to and counter developments that they deem harmful to their interests. It also recognises that the UK should not take an approach that privileges supporting economic growth over democratic accountability and inclusion. The two can and should be mutually reinforcing.

The second is also critical, as there needs to be some baseline democratic capability – credible elections, capable and independent civil society organisations, a functioning parliament and political parties, and a diverse range of political actors – on which to build. Practically, it is also important to have a wide range of relationships with various democratic institutions – ideally built over time to establish understanding and trust – so that your efforts reflect a true spirit of partnership and collaboration, and not unwanted external interference.

The third component reflects a significant departure from most foreign assistance, and requires those providing other forms of support – security assistance, health and education programmes, economic growth and investment – to consider how their work impacts a country’s democratic health. Many examples exist where donor countries support the rule of law and provide funding to human rights organisations, while simultaneously providing military hardware that governments use to repress their citizens. ‘Doing development democratically’ means working coherently across government (and with other donor governments) with an integrated approach to avoid working at cross-purposes. It may also require international actors to move more slowly and allow a country’s democratic stakeholders to debate and influence policy direction, conduct oversight, and occasionally reverse course; getting a minister’s sign-off would no longer be sufficient. The upside is sustainability and resilience of reforms; long-term impact is more likely if they are broad-based and legitimately agreed through domestic political processes.

The fourth component is potentially controversial, as it brings in elements of conditionality, which could be seen as counter to the spirit of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness and subsequent Accra Agenda for Action. However this is an approach that has a sound justification and must be delivered transparently.[26] The UK’s recent approach to foreign assistance has shown limited linkages to a country’s quality of democracy. Seven of the top ten recipients of UK bilateral aid in recent years are electoral autocracies — the other three were closed autocracies. Meanwhile, of the 32 countries that had DFID missions (before the creation of FCDO), only seven had improved democracy scores since 2009 — and those seven include Myanmar and Zimbabwe.^[27]

As set out above, this approach should be framed in terms of a ‘democracy premium’, as clear incentives over and above a baseline level of development cooperation and a prioritisation of support to democracies where need levels are similar, rather than the exclusion of all authoritarian states from receiving development assistance necessary to alleviate endemic poverty among their citizens. Thinking around how best to provide development assistance in authoritarian states is evolving and should continue to change in response to the need not to actively entrench abusive political systems, with the nature and type of direct budget support sometimes provided a key area to review.

Finally, though there is clearly value in devolving decision-making on ODA to embassy and high commission level, resources should be allocated for robust regional and Commonwealth democracy and rights programmes. Research has shown the value of regional engagement and diffusion on democracy and rights issues in large part because political reform can often be dependent on political will of local elites and the incentives and pressures they face, with politicians and government officials often highly motivated to enhance their profile in regional and global forums.[28] Yet with most funding decisions made at country level, embassies have few incentives to devote resources to wider regional programmes. So London or FCDO regional hubs should make sure to retain enough resources to fund more robust regional and Commonwealth programming.

A model the UK may want to examine more closely is the US’s Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC). The MCC requires countries meet a certain standard of ‘just and democratic governance, including a country’s demonstrated commitment to promoting political pluralism, equality, and the rule of law; respecting human and civil rights; protecting private property rights; encouraging transparency and accountability of government; and combating corruption.’[29]

Women at the heart of democratic development

Though the UK’s domestic track record on women’s political representation puts it in the middle of the pack internationally, it had built up a strong development focused set of expertise to improve the lives of women and girls. Given the importance of women’s leadership to achieving more accountable and effective democracy and development these are capabilities should not be lost as the Government’s wider priorities evolve. The recent study by WFD and King’s College London’s Global Institute for Women’s Leadership (GIWL) on the impact of women on democratic governance provides unequivocal evidence that ‘when women are able to exercise political leadership in a manner that is authentic to them, there are gains not just for women and girls but for the whole of society…women are altering the political framework in a way that is bringing more robust consideration of issue areas that can deliver better outcomes for women and girls and that also directly benefit men and boys, such as improving public health services and access to clean water, expanding the provision and quality of education, and tackling violence in the home.’^[30]

Expanding support for inclusive political systems is a force multiplier. Cumulative evidence indicates that women’s political leadership can be a positive disruptor of stale governance arrangements where corruption and poor service delivery have become the norm.^[31] The fifth pillar of DFID’s 2018 Strategic Vision for Gender Equality on women’s political empowerment, of which WFD was an advocate through the Gender and Development Network (GADN), has seen strong rhetorical support but requires a more politically-informed approach to be realised in a development context.^[32]

In her essay Rt Hon. Maria Miller MP notes the Government’s current lack of a comprehensive approach to gender equality and inclusion, particularly in the UK Government’s policy on open societies, and the limited mention the issue received in the Integrated Review.[33] In all its efforts – and in line with the International Development Act – the UK should look for opportunities to strengthen the political inclusion of women, integrating this agenda into its wider work across open society priorities. The adoption of feminist foreign policies by Sweden and Canada provide useful examples of how this might be done and it is an agenda the new Foreign Secretary is known to have an interest in.^[34]

Identifying the UK’s open society priorities

While the case for increasing both the priority given to the Open Societies Agenda within Government and the funding for international aid and diplomacy remains strong and will continue to be argued for, policymakers have to grapple with the situation as it is today. The reality is that while the UK is and can be a leader on the Open Societies Agenda, it lacks the capacity to lead on everything. The task set by the current funding and political situation is how to be most effective with more limited resources than in the past. This will involve identifying where UK’s comparative advantage in the promotion of open societies lies and working out where to prioritise. This will necessitate hard choices given both the UK’s breadth of capability particularly within civil society and the interlocking nature of the challenging of supporting an open society. The essays in this collection give a strong guide to objectives that could and should be prioritised as the building blocks of an open society, highlighting how important each area is and indicating what the impact of making resource driven choices between them will mean. There are two main dimensions to address when considering how to prioritise: geographic and thematic.

Where to focus

When looking at where in the world the UK should focus its attention, the Integrated Review has already set down some fairly clear priorities for the Government’s wider global strategy: increasing focus in the Indo-Pacific, retaining a role in the European Neighbourhood, pivoting from security to trade in the Middle East, prioritising East Africa as compared to the continent’s other sub-regions (except Nigeria), and reducing its footprint across much of the rest of the global south. Irrespective the merits of these choices this geographic prioritisation will clearly influence the Government’s response to open societies issues and where it invests resources. However, particularly in relation to the Open Societies Agenda, it will be important that the UK is able to think holistically about where the UK can do most as a ‘force for good’, both in terms of opportunities for progress and areas to defend.

The international community – and the UK – needs to be better equipped to respond quickly and decisively to bolster democratic opportunities when they present themselves, an entrepreneurial approach to embedding open societies. The failure to successful build on popular groundswells of support for democratic change in countries like Tunisia, Egypt, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Armenia have had a knock-on impact on the attractiveness of liberal democracy and open societies as hoped for reforms petered or were snuffed out, with economic woes often undermining hopes for political change. Working with its international partners, the UK should find ways to deliver a ‘democratic surge’ of political, practical and financial support to buttress democratic openings and sustain them until change becomes embedded over the long term.

The recent victories by reformist Presidential and Parliamentary candidates in Moldova provide perhaps one such democratic opportunity where there is a clear need for a surge of open societies support. As a country in the UK’s priority ‘European Neighbourhood’, the UK should look to do more bilaterally than it has done in the past but it would also provide a wonderful opportunity to show the UK’s ability to work collaboratively with its former EU partners given the EU’s key role in supporting reform in the country. It is also a country where the expense of engaging should not be prohibitively high, as compared to contexts like Iraq, Afghanistan, or even Ukraine. While it is important to look for openings for change provided by new democratic leaning political leaders, the UK and other partners must not to forget the lessons of recent history by ensuring that support is focused on delivering systemic change rather than becoming intimately tied to a particular politician’s political project.

The second potential approach is a more defensive one, focused around long-term strategic priorities more than emerging opportunities. The UK could seek to work in partnership with key emerging democracies at the heart of efforts to drive democratic reform in their respective regions. Leading proponents of conservative internationalism, an approach that may have an appeal for the current government, have recommended employing an ‘inkblot’ strategy to defending and advancing democracy, bolstering robust and influential democracies with open economies and supporting their ability to positively influence their neighbours.^[35] Evidence points to significant value of this approach, particularly in a resource constrained environment, as regional diffusion appears to be effective in advancing democratic norms, even when direct bilateral aid is limited.^[36]

These key regional influencers are truly global ‘swing states’: middle income, emerging countries across Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America that are increasingly influential in diplomatic, economic and security affairs at the regional and global level. Their success – economic, diplomatic, security-wise – has a significant impact on their neighbours and beyond, and if their political systems are open, democratic, and inclusive, this sends a powerful signal to other countries (and their citizens) that democracy is the best way forward. However, the size and often comparative prosperity of these countries means that to meaningfully influence their political trajectory towards more open societies will not only require the use of the UK’s full range of political tools (particularly when ODA is not an option due to income levels), but also working closely in partnership with other like-minded established democracies as mentioned earlier to achieve a positive impact.

It is undoubtedly the case that ECOWAS’s successful intervention in The Gambia, demanding the incumbent respect the results of the 2016 election and stand down, was bolstered by the leadership of influential democratic leadership in Ghana, Senegal, and especially Nigeria. Mexico’s positive influence in the Americas, particularly in Central America, would be massively diminished if it were to become autocratic, as Venezuela’s has seen the decline of its democracy over the past decades. Indonesia has worked diligently to encourage democracy in the region (and beyond), hosting an annual Bali Democracy Forum, which facilitates discussions by leading governments and civil society on the value of democracy without imposing its own views.

As the UK Government has decided to make the Indo-Pacific a key focus for the UK, there is a strong case for much more intensive focus supporting the sustained establishment of open, inclusive, and peaceful democratic societies in the region. The UK’s recently approved status as a dialogue partner of ASEAN is a golden opportunity to up its engagement. Yet UK democracy assistance to that region in the past has been particularly weak, especially in Southeast Asia, where there have been recent missed opportunities to support emerging democratic forces. Given its comparative absence from open societies work in the region and reduced funding envelope, the UK should seek to find ways to work with like-minded partners to bolster existing successful initiatives and identify gaps where the UK has particular capability that would add value, rather than duplicate existing work but with the addition of a Union Jack. Given the recent events in Afghanistan and political flux in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan in particular, the UK should not neglect Central Asia, the hinge point between its European Neighbourhood and Indo-Pacific focus areas. So while it is to be expected that the UK’s open society priority countries will be guided by the FCDO’s wider strategy it must also be informed by where the UK can most effectively by a ‘force for good’ and to seize opportunities that arise.

What to focus on

When deciding how to prioritise thematic areas, all of which are hugely important in and of themselves, it is worth considering how they fit together. This means trying to identify what are the foundations on which the other aspects of open societies can build, where the UK has particular expertise to draw upon and where other like-minded partners are showing leadership and expertise to avoid duplication. Rule of law and media freedom are two obvious areas of strength for the UK. Building on Britain’s history and soft power assets, they form two of the key pillars that support and open societies by acting as a vital check on the political caprice and corruption that can erode civic space.

Traditional independent media models are collapsing around the world – an ‘extinction level event’ according to James Deane writing in this publication – while ‘autocrats are playing the long game’, shaping the global information landscape to fit their objectives. This collapse risks undermining investigative journalism – which is hard to do and even harder to monetise – but which is essential to holding the powerful to account and keeping societies open, as the Pandora papers most recently demonstrate. As Deane says the UK has a key role to play in convening dialogue between media, civil society, technology platforms, governments, international development banks, advertisers and the rest of the private sector to identify solutions but this alone will not be enough. The UK should provide support to the proposed International Fund for Public Interest Media, which could move fast, marshal resources, take risks and innovate. This is a crucial area where the UK can add value within the wider freedom of expression space that is crucial to the openness of a society.

The UK has understandably traded on the legacy of Magna Carta, a long legal tradition and London’s position as the second largest global centre for legal services – both for good or ill – to position itself as an international player on rule of law issues.[37] Murray Hunt rightly argues for the integration of rule of law into whatever strategy the FCDO and Government develops on open societies, human rights and democracy, and for the adoption of and international promotion of the shared understanding of rule of law provided by the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission.[38] Indeed in terms of bolstering support for the rule of law in the European Neighbourhood, it is important for the Government to reflect on the damage done already by its vocal criticism of the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights. It should ensure future discussions around the precise nature of its incorporation into domestic law (such as the update of the Human Rights Act pledged in the Conservative’s 2019 Manifesto) are not conducted in a way that further weaken adherence to these international rule of law norms.[39] Hunt also calls for the development of both a new ‘Global Partnership’ and a new ‘Global Fund’ to coordinate and support rule of law initiatives around the world. As set out above, more needs to be done, going beyond the 2013 Defamation Act, to stop the UK acting as a global centre for libel tourism and SLAPPs.

Rule of law and media freedom are essential tools in the fight to do more to tackle corruption both internationally and at home. The UK’s record domestically and in its Overseas Territories undermine its past efforts at global leadership, providing a safe haven for the riches that help keep authoritarian regimes in power and closing civic space around the world. As Joe Powell notes the National Crime Agency argues that it is ‘a realistic possibility that [money laundering through the UK] is in the hundreds of billions of pounds annually’ because of ‘the ease with which UK companies can be established, the broad range of professional services on offer and the access UK systems provide to higher-risk jurisdictions.’[40] The recent release of the Pandora papers have again drawn attention to the central role the UK and its territories play in facilitating global corruption by authoritarian leaders and their intimates.[41] Therefore, some of the most impactful work the UK can do to support the cause of open societies abroad would be to finally clean out the stables at home. This programme of domestic reform should include delivering on the long-promised beneficial ownership register for property; reforming Companies House; expanding the staffing levels of Companies House and of the National Economic Crime Centre constituent partners (such as the National Crime Agency, Serious Fraud Office and HMRC) to give them the capacity to check registry information and undertake enforcement action; and transforming or abolishing Scottish limited partnerships.[42]

Turning to what can be done by the UK acting internationally and through its aid programme to combat corruption, Phil Mason makes clear in his essay contribution that technocratic box-ticking procedures are not enough and that there is a need for wider reform to the political and social culture. When assessing corruption levels in the societies in which the UK operates, it is important for the UK to fully assess the extent of political control of economic opportunities within a country rather than just monitoring cash transfers made by the international community. This will require measures to improve the transparency of contracting and procurement as well as support for local civil society and investigative journalism to expose the nepotism and cronyism that curtail open societies.

Action on the three pillars of anti-corruption, rule of law and freedom of expression (with a UK focus on media freedom) are mutually reinforcing and can underpin wider progress towards other open societies goals in any country where the UK seeks to engage. Such an approach can provide a baseline framework for engagement with countries on improving governance that applies well beyond those countries which are or are genuinely trying to be democracies. However more thought needs to be given, on a country by country basis, to the utility of such governance reform work in partnership with the governments of authoritarian and semi-authoritarian states where there is no real prospect of shifting the underlying nature of power that shape their systems. It is imperative that such governance work to help achieve ‘modernisation’ or ‘reform’ that may potentially lead to some outcomes beneficial for local people are not mislabelled as democracy assistance. To do so plays into the narratives of regimes claiming to be ‘emerging’ democracies when they are not, devaluing the concept of democracy and feeds into the growing cynicism about the liberal democratic project. As set out above the UK and its partners need to show ‘democratic sensitivity’ in their approach.

On a similar note, Britain and other democracies need to be more willing to openly question the intentions of their interlocutors in authoritarian and semi-authoritarian countries. The UK should not deploy diplomatic pabulum about the reforming or democratic bona fides of primarily autocratic rulers, if the UK is going to be seen by the populous in those countries as genuinely acting as a ‘force for good’ rather than pursuing its economic and security objectives under the cover of ‘democracy washing’. So honestly and rationally identifying the political intentions of potential partners rather than accepting rhetoric is key, recognising democracy and open societies rely on the political will to allow change (and accept defeat) rather than being reduced to discussions purely about capacity and technical compliance.

The UK should consider more thoroughly the political implications of providing security sector support in non-democracies, demanding clearer evidence that such work can deliver real improvements in their behaviour towards citizens, including political dissidents, rather than simply making the forces of political control in closed societies more efficient when this money in these resource constrained times could perhaps be better used elsewhere.[43]

The growing importance of open data is highlighted in a number of essays including by Catherine Stihler, Joe Powell, and Rafael Jiménez-Aybar. It is an approach that can provide the tools for journalist, activists and officials themselves to tackle corruption and improve service outcomes. It is an agenda which could give the UK much to say in the international rule setting bodies where it is interested in becoming a thought leader and rule maker. Country governments need both support and pressure to deliver on this agenda and to ensure that the data produced is credible as well as accessible.

The UK’s recent funding decisions will have a regrettable impact on its ability to directly support civil society groups at the sharp end of efforts to shrink civic space, reducing its ability to provide the ‘flexible and sustainable funding’ for civil society rightly argued for by Iva Dobichina, Poonam Joshi, Sarah Green and James Savage in their essay. Given the funding position seems unlikely to change in the short-to-medium term, it is imperative that the Government finds other ways to ‘proactively defend civic space and the people in it’ as those authors request. Ambassadors should be proactively encouraged through FCDO policies to speak out more regularly on cases involving activists at risk, the unjustly imprisoned and to protect civic space more broadly. Minsters should also play a more active role to support such an approach and to escalate the pressure from officials on the ground.

Certainly there is little in the headline rhetoric on immigration coming from the Home Office that would suggest that the environment in the UK will become more conducive to providing emergency protection for civic activists at risk. However, if the Government showed political will in this area, given the overall political salience of immigration has declined since the 2016 referendum result, there might be room for more targeted measures to support asylum claims for known human rights defenders and other activists.[44]

Electoral processes around the world are under attack, as highlighted in the essay by Dame Audrey Glover, with disinformation and fake observers used to dilute criticism of election rigging. Western countries including the UK need to take action to protect credible election observation and this will require both investment and coordination. The FCDO could look at the option to maintain a rapid response fund for critical, unanticipated electoral and political processes worldwide, similar to USAID’s Elections and Political Processes (EPP) Fund. In the past, snap elections (particularly in countries without DFID missions) would typically leave the UK flatfooted, with few readily available mechanisms for rapidly mobilising the resources (financial and human) necessary to launch timely, robust initiatives. A standing fund with resources set aside for these scenarios would be of great value, particularly in the event of important elections in locations where there are few FCDO governance advisers in country or in country ODA resources available. Recent examples of countries with these types of elections would include Malaysia, Bolivia, Armenia, El Salvador, The Gambia, and North Macedonia.

The global promotion of LGBTQ+ rights had been an area where the UK had shown leadership over a number of years but it is notable that that the only mention of the issue in the Integrated Review is in relation to Britain being a welcoming country for LGBTQ+ tourists. Given the conservative backlash against LGBTQ+ rights in many regions around the world, sometimes with narratives crafted by Russia and other revisionist powers, careful thought should be given how best to act politically and using UK soft power to respond to this challenge, recognising that whether or not the UK chooses to engage on the topic it will be used to delegitimise open societies and liberal democracies unless these narratives are countered.

COP26 (the United Nations Climate Conference taking place in Glasgow in early November 2021) has put the UK’s climate change efforts at the front and centre of its recent diplomacy as it responds to perhaps the greatest threat humanity will have to deal with over the remainder of this century. However, once the UK’s time in the spotlight on this issue has passed it will have to drill down on the areas within this debate where it should focus its political capital. This will not only be by taking action at a domestic level to deliver on its targets but to identify specific areas where it will seek to maintain a global leadership role. On potential area could be the promotion of environmental democracy work as outlined by in the essay Rafael Jiménez-Aybar, which would seem to be a good way to draw together these the environmental and Open Societies Agenda as they note that ‘many of today’s environmental concerns are, at their core, political issues, and failures of governance.’

Supporting British democracy assistance

There is an important role to be played by UK institutions in building partnerships with likeminded actors in countries looking to reform. The WFD, one of the two organisations responsible for putting together this project, has direct experience in building relationships between UK actors in the political system – parliamentarians, party and parliamentary officials, civil society organisations and others – and their counterparts in partner countries. WFD have found that the strong appetite for these relationships often derives from the respect and admiration for the UK’s democratic culture and the experience in our democratic institutions and practices.[45] The Peer to Peer Community of Practice – established by the UK Stabilisation Unit’s Global Partnerships International (GPI) – has circulated reams of research on the potential of this approach to deliver both soft power dividends and meaningful reform.

The numerous existing linkages between British actors and institutions are key mechanisms for exercising UK influence, contributing both to alliance building efforts and outreach to closed and autocratic regimes.^[46] However, maximising the value of this wide-ranging engagement requires active brokering of relationships, and, when possible, better coordination and collaboration amongst disparate efforts, including between UK government ministries, subnational government, and soft power institutions (including leading internationally-oriented arm’s length bodies such as British Council and WFD).

Maximising the developmental and soft power value of working with the wide range of innovative British democracy institutions will require a concerted investment, though not necessarily through more funding, but a change in how funding is allocated. Many UK democracy assistance organisations are undersized in comparison to their counterparts e.g. in Germany and the US, which have received decades of sole-source funding from their governments, often in the hundreds of millions per year. These organisations then utilise this capacity to win grants and contracts from foreign governments, including the UK, to expand their reach even further. By contrast:

The 2015 International Development Committee report on Parliamentary Strengthening highlighted the lack of investment in ‘Westminster organisations’, such as WFD and the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association UK, with most DFID governance funding going to large for-profits and multilateral organisations (which provide minimal soft power benefits to the UK).^[47]
The UK’s Electoral Commission, unlike most counterparts, has no legal mandate to engage internationally and the Local Government Association (LGA) scaled back its international work over the last decade.
There has been no UK organisation providing significant levels of international election assistance since the bankruptcy in 2014 of Election Reform International Services (ERIS). Only in recent years has WFD begun to fill this void through targeted election support in contexts such as the DRC and the Western Balkans.
The British Council’s 2019 Tailored Review explicitly recommended the Council de-prioritise its work on justice and governance, while offering no alternative British institution to fill the gap.^[48]
BBC Media Action had its five year, £90 million Programme Partnership Arrangement (PPA) closed in 2017 and replaced by a smaller accountable grant, despite the PPA being rated A+ or higher each year.

Together these decisions, made separately over a number of years, have combined to undermine the UK’s ability to advance democracy, rights, and governance. The FCDO – if properly resourced and operating under a robust strategic open societies framework – represents an opportunity to 1) develop long-term strategic relationships with leading British organisations already operating relevant programmes at scale abroad; and 2) commit to investing in developing the capacity of smaller British actors – particularly in the areas of political inclusion, rule of law, civic tech and innovation, and local governance – to play a greater role abroad. This building of UK based non-profit organisations must not come at the expense of but instead be complemented by greater direct investment in the capacity building of local partners to avoid unhelpful competition for resources and the fostering of collaborative relationships; a good example would be providing more funding directly to women’s rights organisations in country, while offering technical support and two way learning with relevant UK organisations.

It is worth comparing the UK approach to supporting domestic democracy institutions with Germany, France, the EU, the US, with a deeper dive on the US experience. In Germany, most open societies funding is directed on a sole source basis to either the state-owned GIZ (mainly for good governance) or to the party foundations (mainly for political systems and parties), in the hundreds of millions of euros (if not up to a billion or more) annually. In France, state-owned Expertise France received over 60 million euro in 2019 to implement democratic, financial and economic governance programmes. The EU is now backing Team Europe Initiatives (TEIs) – joint activities by the EU, its member states, and the European development finance institutions focused on a specific sector – with as many as 150 in development, most of which would likely be directed to EU – and member-state organisations.[49] The Netherlands, Denmark, and Finland are the largest investors in their own multi-party foundations, which also increasingly access EU funding mechanisms under which UK-based organisations are ineligible to participate.[50]

Meanwhile, the US established the National Endowment for Democracy, National Democratic Institute, International Republican Institute, and the International Foundation for Electoral Systems in the mid-1980s. For nearly 40 years, the US has invested substantial resources in these American democracy assistance institutions through a range of sole-source mechanisms, in particular the Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening (CEPPS). Under President Biden, investment in these four institutions is expected to reach $700-800 million annually.

As part of the Global Britain approach outlined in the Integrated Review, there is clearly value in supporting highly capable (if undersized) British institutions to help deliver its Open Societies Agenda, while simultaneously enhancing UK soft power. While a new, stand-alone mechanism similar to the US CEPPS could make sense in the longer term, a shorter term fix is available. An Open Societies Fund could be ring-fenced from the Conflict Security and Stability Fund (CSSF) – a logical source given the contribution democratic societies can make towards long-term resilience and stability – and could be delivered by a consortium of British organisations (Team UK). These ‘best of British’ organisations would be capable not only of delivering impactful programming and generating soft power dividends, but would also be increasing competitive in securing EU, other European, and US-funding, further stimulating their growth and capabilities.

The next steps

As James Deane notes in his essay in relation to media freedom and one of the editors (Adam Hug) has argued in the FPC’s ‘Finding Britain’s role in a changing world’ project, there is a need for democracies to find a way to project strategic intent beyond the constraints of the electoral cycle.^[51] This will require building cross party agreement on the nature of the challenge and on certain objectives, as well as the development of tools that will be sustained irrespective of who is in power. This long-term, cross-party approach is necessary to ensure that the cause of open societies and liberal democracies can withstand the pressure from authoritarian states and revisionist powers seeking to roll back the forces of freedom on the world stage. Germany and the US are notable for their strong cross-party commitment to democracy assistance. In fact, advocates from both leading parties in the US Congress came together and pushed through increased funding during the Trump administration, despite initial plans to slash these budgets.[52]

This publication brings together a range of leading voices to draw attention to some of the most important challenges facing human rights, good governance and democracy around the world. They make the case for prioritising open societies in UK foreign policy and look at where Britain should focus its energy within the different areas that together comprise the Open Societies Agenda, areas that are almost all complementary in nature but which are competing for resources and attention. What is clear from all of the contributions is that the loss of funding provided by the UK’s ODA cuts will have an impact on the UK’s ability to deliver on its open society ambitions but it certainly is not time to throw in the towel. With a combination of the necessary amount of political will and an integrated strategy that brings together and uses all the tools at the Government’s disposal to support the Open Societies Agenda the UK can make a real difference. So it is therefore imperative that the UK becomes more willing to aggressively tackle corruption both at home and abroad, to use trade incentives, to actively deploy diplomatic and political influence, to work with partners and reform how it delivers its international aid and democracy support to ensure the Government delivers on its commitment for the country to be a force for good in the world.

Adam Hug became the Director of the Foreign Policy Centre in November 2017, overseeing the FPC’s operations and strategic direction. He had previously been the Policy Director at the Foreign Policy Centre from 2008-2017. His research focuses on human rights and governance issues particularly in the former Soviet Union. He also writes on UK foreign policy and EU issues. He studied at Geography at the University of Edinburgh as an undergraduate and Development Studies with Special Reference to Central Asia as a post-grad.

[1] Cabinet Office, Global Britain in a Competitive Age: the Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy, March 2021, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/global-britain-in-a-competitive-age-the-integrated-review-of-security-defence-development-and-foreign-policy

[2] Cabinet Office, 2021 Open Societies Statement, G7 Summit in Cornwall UK, July 2021, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/2021-open-societies-statement

[3] Sarah Repucci and Amy Slipowitz, Freedom in the World 2021: Democracy under Siege, Freedom House, 2021, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2021/democracy-under-siege

[4] Philip Stephens, The west is the author of its own weakness, Financial Times, September 2021, https://www.ft.com/content/9779fde6-edc6-4d4c-b532-fc0b9cad4ed9

[5] Yascha Mounk and Roberto Sefan Foa, Opinion: Yes, people really are turning away from democracy, The Washington Post, December 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/12/08/yes-millennials-really-are-surprisingly-approving-of-dictators/

[6] Sintia Radu, China’s Web Surveillance Model Expands Abroad, U.S. News, November 2018, https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2018-11-01/china-expands-its-surveillance-model-by-training-other-governments; According to Freedom House, the following countries have received surveillance training from China: They include: Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Myanmar, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam, Belarus, Georgia, Russia, Brazil, Venezuela, Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United Arab Emirates, Angola, Ethiopia, The Gambia, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Sudan, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

[7] Edited by Adam Hug, Sharing worst practice: How countries and institutions in the former Soviet Union help create legal tools of repression, FPC, May 2016, https://fpc.org.uk/publications/sharingworstpractice/

[8] The latter objective not being helped by the finalisation of Nordstream 2.

[9] Bettcher eloquently argues the case for the private sector bolstering pluralism in his essay. However, it is important to recognise from a European perspective both Social and Christian Democratic political and economic models have achieved long-lasting open societies with a greater level of state engagement in the economy than a pure free market model would necessarily prescribe but they are marked by pluralistic politics, the rule of law, active civil society, as a well as freedom of expression and the press that can curb corruption and other distortions that harm both the economy and society.

[10] Adam Hug, Finding Britain’s role in a changing world: Principles (and priorities) for Global Britain, FPC, September 2020, https://fpc.org.uk/finding-britains-role-in-a-changing-world-principles-and-priorities-for-global-britain/ in The principles for Global Britain, FPC< September 2020, https://fpc.org.uk/publications/the-principles-for-global-britain/; For more on the role of middle powers see: Rachel Kleinfeld, Thomas Carothers, Steven Feldstein and Richard Youngs, How Middle-Power Democracies Can Help Renovate Global Democracy Support, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, February 2021, https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/02/04/how-middle-power-democracies-can-help-renovate-global-democracy-support-pub-83809

[11] See: Dr Nicholas Wright, The UK and the international rules-based system, FPC, FPC, September 2020, https://fpc.org.uk/the-uk-and-the-international-rules-based-system/; Malcolm Chalmers, Which Rules? Why There is No Single ‘Rules-Based International System’, RUSI, April 2019, https://rusieurope.eu/sites/default/files/201905_op_which_rules_why_there_is_no_single_rules_based_international_system_web.pdf; Albeit that international institutions and rules have always functioned with the participation of autocracies and weak democracies.

[12] Created in September 2020 through the merger of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) and the Department for International Development (DFID).

[13] DFID, Guide to working with parliaments and political parties for sustainable development, November 2017, http://data.parliament.uk/DepositedPapers/Files/DEP2018-0824/GUIDE_TO_WORKING_WITH_PARLIAMENTS_AND_POLITICAL_PARTIES__final_.pdf

[14] For more on SLAPPs see here: FPC, Unsafe for Scrutiny programme, https://fpc.org.uk/programmes/unsafe-for-scrutiny/

[15] Jonathan Freedland, In plain sight, Boris Johnson is rigging the system to stay in power, The Guardian, October 20201, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/01/boris-johnson-rigging-the-system-power-courts-protest-elections

[16] Edited by Adam Hug, Projecting the UK’s ability to defend its values, FPC, December 2020, https://fpc.org.uk/publications/projecting-the-uks-values-abroad/

[17] Edited by Adam Hug, Protecting the UK’s ability to defend its values, FPC, September 2020, https://fpc.org.uk/publications/protecting-the-uks-ability-to-defend-its-values/; Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament, Russia, July 2020, https://isc.independent.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/CCS207_CCS0221966010-001_Russia-Report-v02-Web_Accessible.pdf

[18] ICIJ, An ICIJ Investigation – Pandora Papers, October 2021, https://www.icij.org/investigations/pandora-papers/; Jonathan Freedland, In plain sight, Boris Johnson is rigging the system to stay in power, The Guardian, October 20201, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/01/boris-johnson-rigging-the-system-power-courts-protest-elections

^[19] Monitor: Tracking civic space, UK added to human rights watchlist over threats to peaceful assembly, September 2021, https://monitor.civicus.org/UnitedKingdom/

[20] Edited by Adam Hug, Partnerships for the future of UK Foreign Policy, FPC, December 2020, https://fpc.org.uk/publications/partnerships-for-the-future-of-uk-foreign-policy/

[21] Ian Mitchell, Twitter Post, Twitter, August 2021, https://twitter.com/econmitch/status/1427630587020468239?s=11

[22] Peter Geoghegan, UK government plans 80% cuts to ‘world-leading’ anti-corruption work, Open Democracy, March 2021, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/uk-government-plans-80-cuts-to-world-leading-anti-corruption-work/

[23] Graeme Ramshaw, Doing development democratically, WFD, July 2020, https://www.wfd.org/2020/07/22/doing-development-democratically/

[24] Adapted from the UK Government’s guidance on the concept of Conflict sensitivity, see: Stabilisation Unit, Conflict Sensitivity: Tools and Guidance, Gov.uk, June 2016, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/conflict-sensitivity-tools-and-guidance; The ‘Do no harm’ principle is an important approach in this field and there are important lessons to be learned that from work in this area. See also: CDA Collaborative, Conflict-Sensitivity and Do No Harm, https://www.cdacollaborative.org/what-we-do/conflict-sensitivity/#:~:text=Conflict%20sensitivity%20refers%20to%20the,development%20and%2For%20peacebuilding%20interventions; International Alert, Conflict-sensitive approaches to development, humanitarian assistance and peacebuilding,

https://www.international-alert.org/publications/conflict-sensitive-approaches-development-humanitarian-assistance-and-peacebuilding

[25] For examples of doing trade to proactively support development see: Adam Hug, Projecting the UK’s values abroad: Introduction, FPC, December 2020, https://fpc.org.uk/projecting-the-uks-values-abroad-introduction/

[26] A ‘sound justification’ and the need to be delivered transparently are the criteria set out in the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness and Accra Agenda for such conditions. See The Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness and the Accra Agenda for Action, 2005-2008,https://www.oecd.org/dac/effectiveness/34428351.pdf

[27] Alex Thier, Opinion: Doing development democratically, devex, September 2020, https://www.devex.com/news/opinion-doing-development-democratically-97977

[28] Scott Mainwaring and Anibal Perez-Linan, Why Regions of the World Are Importance: Regional Specificities and Region-Wide Diffusion of Democracy, ResearchGate, June 2007, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265108633_Why_Regions_of_the_World_Are_Important_Regional_Specificities_and_Region-Wide_Diffusion_of_Democracy

[29] Millennium Challenge Corporation, Guide to the MCC Indicators for Fiscal Year 2021, October 2020, https://www.mcc.gov/resources/doc/guide-to-the-indicators-fy-2021

[30] WFD, The Global Institute for Women’s Leadership and King’s College London, Women political leaders: the impact of gender on democracy, 2020 https://www.kcl.ac.uk/giwl/assets/women-political-leaders.pdf

[31] Ibid.

[32] Gender & Development Network, Working Group: Women’s Participation and Leadership, https://gadnetwork.org/participation-and-influence

[33] Letter from Rt Hon Dominic Raab MP to Sarah Champion MP, December 2020, https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/3683/documents/38142/default/; Paul Abernathy and Abigael Baldoumas, What the integrated review means for international development, Bond, 19 March 2021, https://www.bond.org.uk/news/2021/03/what-the-integrated-review-means-for-international-development

[34] Government Offices of Sweden, Feminist foreign policy, https://www.government.se/government-policy/feminist-foreign-policy/; Government of Canada, Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy, https://www.international.gc.ca/world-monde/issues_development-enjeux_developpement/priorities-priorites/policy-politique.aspx?lang=eng

[35] Not a philosophical school that the authors are part of themselves per se, but raise this inkblot strategy given the current Conservative government and the potential merits of the approach. Henry R. Nau, Conservative Internationalism, National Review, September 2013, https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2013/09/30/conservative-internationalism/

[36] Scott Mainwaring and Anibal Perez-Linan, Why Regions of the World Are Important: Regional Specificities and Region-Wide Diffusion of Democracy, ResearchGate, June 2007, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265108633_Why_Regions_of_the_World_Are_Important_Regional_Specificities_and_Region-Wide_Diffusion_of_Democracy

[37] The Economist, London’s business courts face growing competition, April 2021, https://www.economist.com/britain/2021/04/24/londons-business-courts-face-growing-competition

[38] Venice Commission, Rule of Law, Council of Europe, https://www.venice.coe.int/WebForms/pages/?p=02_Rule_of_law&lang=EN

[39] Conservatives, Our Plan – Conservative Manifesto 2019, https://www.conservatives.com/our-plan

[40] NCA, National Strategic Assessment of Serious and Organised Crime, 2020, https://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/who-we-are/publications/437-national-strategic-assessment-of-serious-and-organised-crime-2020/file

[41] ICIJ, An ICIJ Investigation – Pandora Papers, October 2021, www.icij.org/investigations/pandora-papers/

[42] Adam Hug, Projecting the UK’s values abroad: Introduction, FPC, December 2020, https://fpc.org.uk/projecting-the-uks-values-abroad-introduction/

[43] This is not to imply that progress cannot ever be made but it is an argument for caution and greater rigour in assessment of project implementation.

[44] Sunder Katwala, Twitter Post, Twitter, December 2020, https://twitter.com/sundersays/status/1340243075587837953?lang=en

[45] While often beneficial some caution must also be taken to monitor and evaluate the nature of the UK’s institutional engagement to ensure it is delivering results from an open societies perspective, particularly when dealing with institutions in authoritarian and semi-authoritarian states to avoid adding international legitimacy to Potemkin Parliaments.

[46] Alistair MacDonald, Soft Power 30 2019, British Council, October 2019, https://www.britishcouncil.org/research-policy-insight/insight-articles/soft-power-30-2019

[47] The report recommends “a joint DFID/FCO fund be established to commission expert organisations; this would also enable work to be commissioned at short notice when opportunities arise. A joint fund would combine the differing and important skills of the two departments. The fund could be on a similar scale to the £21.4 million which BBC Media Action received as a global grant from DFID in 2013–14.” See: House of Commons International Development Committee, Parliamentary Strengthening, Ninth Report of Session 2014-15, January 2015, https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201415/cmselect/cmintdev/704/704.pdf

[48] “Recommendation 10: The British Council should focus on its core objectives of promoting the English language, education and British culture, and reconsider all its non-core work, in particular its justice and governance work. Absent a strong rationale on the British Council’s added value, it should consider withdrawing from these areas.” See: FCO, British Council Tailored Review, 2019, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/785297/British_Council_Tailored_Review.pdf

[49] Samuel Pleeck and Mikaela Gavas, Getting to the Bottom of the Team Europe Initiatives, Center for Global Development, May 2021, https://www.cgdev.org/blog/getting-bottom-team-europe-initiatives

[50] While building UK capacity is absolutely crucial as argued with the Team UK approach below, there may still be scope for looking again the nature of UK participation in EU funding arrangements so that opportunities for fruitful and large scale collaborations are not completely excluded in future. It is worth noting that in the area of research the UK will remain an associate member of the Horizon 2020 scheme, enabling a degree of ongoing pan-European collaboration. European Commission, Q&A on the UK’s participation in Horizon Europe, February 2021, https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/default/files/research_and_innovation/strategy_on_research_and_innovation/documents/ec_rtd_uk-participation-in-horizon-europe.pdf

[51] Edited by Adam Hug, Finding Britain’s role in a changing world, FPC, September 2020, https://fpc.org.uk/publications/the-principles-for-global-britain/

[52] Thomas Carothers and Frances Z. Brown, Three Ways the New Congress Can Defend Democracy Abroad, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, November 2018, https://carnegieendowment.org/2018/11/16/three-ways-new-congress-can-defend-democracy-abroad-pub-77736

Topics

Brexit

Civil Society

Covid-19

Democracy and Elections

Good Governance and Institutional Reform

Human Rights

International Relations and Geopolitics

SLAPPs

Regions

Europe

United Kingdom

The importance of open societies to the UK’s ‘force for good’ ambition – A politician’s perspective

Article by Rt Hon Alistair Burt

If all politics is local, then it is also personal. I did not become a politician because of some abstract theory. I became a politician because I was free to do so, free to champion what I wanted to see in the world in which I was growing up, and free to complain about what I did not like and wanted to change. The world was not closed to me. When I was young, I had trusted news available which enabled me from my country to watch, with wide, wet eyes, tanks roll over my continent, in the Czechoslovakia where Alexander Dubcek was not as free as I was. Above all, as one born just a decade after the end of the Second World War, I was able to appreciate from an early age that my freedom had been dearly bought, and that the grotesque abuses of power during my century were within the memory of those around me, who still wondered how on earth it had been allowed to happen.

The UK does not support open societies because the Government tells it to do so. The people of the UK support open societies in practice through almost everything they do in their daily lives, where millions have a life in which the principles of association, information gathering, discussion, challenge, and political activity are geared not to defending some treatise, but to making their lives, and those of others around them, better. And they demand that their government takes heed, and commits itself also to building that world, and being a ‘global force for good.’

Let me set out why it is important to those in politics and Government to hear that call and offer conceptual and practical support to open societies; to demonstrate the approach I have seen the UK take to do so; to suggest what needs to change and be better done, and why it is important to be doing this now.

Why are open societies important to the UK?

In 2020, Anne Applebaum’s work ‘Twilight of democracy- the failure of politics and the parting of friends’ encapsulated in a very personal way the sense of modern-day fragility of democracy, and the closing down of the democratic mind.[1] She focused attention on not just the growing confidence and assertion of existing authoritarian states, but on how both fledgling and established democracies were lapsing from the democratic ideals which had been so hard won. A combination of a perversion of nationalism, the abuse of faith, a re-invention of the ‘strong man’, and the undermining of critics as traitorous were all combining to dim the opportunity of openness which history had delivered. Her challenge was stark. “It is possible we are living through the twilight of democracy; that our civilisation may already be heading for anarchy or tyranny, as the ancient philosophers and America’s founders once feared; that a new generation of advocates of illiberal or authoritarian ideas will come to power in the 21^st Century, as they did in the twentieth; that their visions of the world born of resentment, anger or deep, messianic dreams could triumph.”[2]

I do not believe such a warning is far-fetched. If what Applebaum, and others, fear is not to come to pass, then the underlying causes of those fears must be addressed, partly by reaffirming what it is we believe and stand for, and partly by action to promote what it is we say we believe. The UK’s historical experience is that the basic buildings blocks of freedom and open societies combine to match the aspirations of human society and confer a degree of security and stability to allow individuals and communities to prosper. In a world now facing many challenges unknown to those who framed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, the UK Government believes that open societies are best placed to meet them, from climate change to the digital revolution, and to possess the resources to be harnessed in combatting them.

For developing societies, who may be faced with choices of partners with whom to stand to tackle these challenges, we need to be unequivocal in asserting that open societies provide the best opportunity of success. That partnering with the UK and other leading democracies – from both the global North and South – is more beneficial than collaborating with China and Russia. A research paper for Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD) concluded: “In practice, the evidence also seems to support this theory. Stable, transparent governments built on respect for human rights and the rule of law tend to foster environments that are conducive to open and inclusive economic growth.”[3]

Faced with this reality, that open societies and democracy are truly under threat, it was important to see the recent G7 statement of support for the principles of Open Societies at the June 2021 Summit in the UK. After a preamble setting out the basics of such societies, from the fundamentals of democracy to freedom of expression and the rule of law, the Statement concluded with commitments to, inter alia, “strengthen open societies globally by protecting civic space and media freedom, promoting freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and association, and freedom of religion or belief, and by tackling all forms of discrimination, including racism.”[4] Having seen what it is we are about, how do we fare in doing it?

What the UK has sought to do

As a Parliamentarian for over 30 years, and as a Minister, I have taken part in, and helped evolve approaches to, building open societies around the world. The UK’s commitment has been developed in a variety of ways. Institution building, the creation and sustaining of the independent building blocks of authority, has been a key staple of it. The UK created programmes to transfer technical expertise of administration, or justice, or similar at all levels of Government, local and national, as well as supported democratic institutions such as political parties and elected legislatures. As well as delivering practical outcomes, the personal relationships created through this engagement have also added immeasurably to the UK’s soft power.

There is much discussion on the efficacy of the work, which will vary depending on the climate it is reaching into. It is not unnatural that I would support the work of party-to-party exchanges, and Parliamentary engagement, through those like WFD or Global Partners Governance (GPG), with whom I travelled and worked recently. Some argue that dealing with parties, and indeed Parliaments, can risk unwise political involvement or be wasted time compared with working with governments directly to ‘get things done’. But, as GPG explain in their Guide ‘Why work with Parliaments’, “a country in which government is not required to account for its actions or justify its decisions risks bad policy and poor administration. Put crudely, while support to the Executive is likely to produce some quick wins, working with parliaments offers far greater opportunities for long-term institutional, cultural and behavioural change”.[5]

Parliamentary exchange has been enhanced through the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA UK) and through the Inter Parliamentary Union, of which the UK and France were the originator in 1889. The British Group of the IPU takes a leading role in its work, which not only drives mutual exchanges, but also in raising the protection of MPs within states to support them in pursuing accountability. In not all states is it comfortable or safe to be an MP, and the UK’s participation in the IPU should also be seen as a vital element in our commitment to representative democracy.

There is a further element to the UK’s work. Former Secretary of State DFID Penny Mordaunt, in her introduction to the Feb 2018 UK Government paper ‘Open Aid, Open Societies’ spelled out the importance of scrutiny in the democratic process, in explaining that a deliberate purpose of the UK’s work was to “allow oversight agencies, citizens and the media to scrutinise how money is spent, and enable people everywhere to hold their governments to account”. Justifying this further in a development context under financial pressure back in the UK, she explained that “open and inclusive societies have stronger growth” and that such openness crucially “close the opportunities that allow unscrupulous individuals to get away with corruption”.[6]

That phrase ‘hold to account’ is important; both a light to some, and a threat to others. Effective Civil Society Organisations constitute a vital element in open societies. WFD has made a concerted effort in recent years to act as an honest broker, building more constructive relationships between civil society, parliaments, and political parties; this is particularly useful when it comes to protecting civic and political space from overbearing CSO legislation.

The importance of promoting inclusive politics in this field cannot be overestimated. The commitment that the UK has made, through successive Governments, to champion women’s rights, has been a powerful example followed through with equal determination in respect of other vulnerable or disempowered groups. No society is truly open if these are ignored. Examples such as the campaign to prevent sexual violence against women in conflict, the appointment of the UK’s first special envoy for gender equality, and the UK’s co-chairing of the International Equal Rights Coalition driving a comprehensive strategy to increase international action to defend the rights of LGBT people around the world have all added to the UK’s expertise and ambitions for others.

What needs to change, and why now?

A recognition of why open societies are important to the UK and other like-minded, only takes us so far, in answer to Applebaum’s warning of approaching twilight. What we must confront is that in many emerging democracies, institutions are struggling to survive and become influential. And in some formerly strong democracies, from India to Brazil, openness is being closed down overtly and covertly. Authoritarian regimes have gained sufficient strength from the problems of others to offer an historic challenge to those who believed that the sweep and arc of history would bend towards openness, democracy, and human rights.

In other words, what we have tried to do has not been good enough, and we need to re-engineer and re-invest. The concept of ‘long-term and enduring’ need recalibration. Whilst trying to deliver and support openness and democracy in states after a military intervention is now different in character today than it was in 1945, we need to recognise that even in those places where this has been the case there are those locally who share aspirations which are not ‘western’ but universal. To help them build a society which ‘holds to account’ the powerful, long term must be closer to ‘forever’ and sustained more than a maximum of 20 years. It is not an event, but a process, so funding, project building and working locally must be at the heart of permanent partnerships, not time constrained impositions.

Nor should we fall into the trap of accepting that a state is simply its authorities, who, if failing or turning against openness, should be judged as a no longer worth supporting. There are always people working in any society for the things we all hold dear and aspire to; we need to find ways to keep supporting them, whether it be parliaments, political parties, civil society, media, lawyers and judges, and human rights activists. The feeling of abandonment amongst women in Afghanistan is pertinent, as is the ongoing need to support those forced into exile, for example Myanmar and Belarus.

Institution building must continue its patient work, particularly in addressing poor governance, and, crucially, corruption. All over the world, wherever corruption is embedded into the systems of administration, efforts to build a more open society are already working on foundations of sand. Donors and supporters have too often failed to confront those most responsible – not least Ministers, who have to navigate conversations about corruption with those very leaders whose hands may be deeply immersed in it. Looking for the reasons why there was a vacuum of support for the Afghanistan government at a crucial time, the steady siphoning off of funds for development assistance by those in positions of authority will loom large. Whether or not the former President left Kabul with a helicopter stuffed with cash may or may not be true – the important point is that his people thought it might well be.

Bad governance and corruption allow other actors into the space of delivering services, and again worldwide, insurgent movements and criminal gangs from the Sahel to Latin America gain influence over local populations by becoming the authority figures, before turning those populations either to their own ideologies or simply a shield against those who seek to reassert the monopoly of authority a legitimate government must possess. Building health and housing services and running local government competently may not create the same headlines and pictures as visits to refugee camps, but we need to value these things more.

These opportunities play into new possibilities to drive open societies. In a recent paper, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace offered some useful suggestions to address current failings.[7] Firstly, by appealing to what they term ‘Middle Powers’ the paper addresses the elephant in the room, of the US current role in democracy assistance and wider international development. It would be a tragedy, and completely counterproductive, to lose the immense resource, financial and of goodwill, which has characterised the US commitment to open societies and democracies since 1945. The US is still the world’s largest donor and engine of change for good, but the damage to reputation recently is significant. Whilst no one’s government speaks for all, the Trump administration’s handling of international alliances and relationships, and the President’s obvious disdain for many developing parts of the world where US citizens and agencies were actively working to deliver openness and democracy, added significantly to a world view still disaffected by US military interventions, particularly in the Middle East.

This was compounded by the appalling events of January 6^th in Washington. A prime tenet of an open society and democratic practice is the peaceful transition of power, where elections matter, and leaders depart. That the President of the United States was at the heart of attempts to frustrate the electoral process, or worse, at the Capitol, means that the US preaching to rulers who are getting tanks onto the streets to stay in office rings rather hollow. Couple that with the dismay over the new Administration’s handling of Afghanistan and it is a weakened US which now confronts the many challenges facing democracy, not least in its own backyard, where efforts to restrict voting rights in a number of US States combine with an extreme and continuing polarisation of the political and media space.

There are challenges closer to home also. The UK Government’s attempt to re-balance the powers of Parliament against the courts in relation to Judicial Review, or to ensure the integrity of the electoral process through the Elections Bill currently before Parliament rightly faces tough scrutiny from those who question these provisions. However well-intentioned measures may be to deal with a contemporary problem, or a potential one, a reading of proposed legislation in a more neutral context ought to be the test, and the UK Government must address such questions through a constitutional and not a political lens.

All this suggests that new and innovative ways are necessary to seek to roll back current challenges. The many ‘Middle Powers’ in the Carnegie paper, which they define as ‘countries which regardless of their geopolitical weight have made democracy support a sustained component of their foreign policy’, from Japan and Australia to the UK, can combine to lead initiatives whilst the US recovers. They can use a traditionally indirect approach, instead of direct confrontation, to support the essential infrastructure of openness, but they must work together. Media freedom, religious tolerance, youth engagement, gender inclusion, human rights, all working with the grain of those within states who want the same.

At the same time, challenges such as global warming, pandemics, and trade protectionism allow for interaction with authoritarian states, who will find it hard or impossible to meet not only international standards but the demands of their own peoples without the structure of an open society. Global health security, climate change – and in particular the environmental threats which bring climate change directly to the streets, such as drought or extreme weather – none of these can be sensibly handled without mechanisms of scrutiny, challenge, media freedom and resource which go hand in hand with open societies, not those that close things down. The work will need to be patient, but urgency born of necessity will be an ally.

Finally, despite all the soft talk, those with values have got to be prepared to enunciate them, stand up for them, and resource them. The forthcoming Summit for Democracy called by President Joe Biden in December this year takes place under shadows unforeseen when planned. Afghanistan has given a boost to those who believe that what they need to do is wait, even generationally, to see all that has been advanced in terms of freedom over centuries swept away. The will of all those, worldwide, who believe in democratic values is being tested as never before, challenged by those who believe that such will, appetite and endurance no longer match those with seemingly longer timescales than democracies seem to allow.

Clear reassertions of values must continue to be backed up where necessary by tough actions, individually and collectively, on human rights abuses and sanctions. These must be increasingly smart, and reprisals against them, such as imposed on Australia in a dispute with China, should be collectively resisted.

The United Kingdom also needs to match with resource the words of support contained in the G7 Statement, the Integrated Review, and no doubt what will be added by a UK Statement to the December Summit for Democracy. It’s worth remembering that this December is the first of two planned Summits; the second (in December 2022) will examine progress made over the past year, and the UK does not want to be seen as falling short.

The reductions to the Aid Budget this year affected all aspects of the work the UK is doing at Government level to tackle the crises facing democracy.[8] Whilst the overall contribution remains strong, as the Government is keen to explain, reductions at a critical time leave their mark, and again go to the heart of will and attitude. An up to 80 per cent reduction in support related to Conflict and Open Societies only gladdens those who believe that the tide for freedom is turning, and that despite efforts on sanctions and strong words from Dominic Raab on an issue for which he has a passion, he is ultimately undone by those with other motives elsewhere.[9]

The United Kingdom can neither escape its past, nor should it. The actions of yesterday have consequences today. But one of those consequences is the deep belief in the fundamentals of freedom and openness which have sustained us, and those who think like us, for centuries. The world is not irrevocably divided into those who are for and against such values. Hearts and minds must be won with some renewed urgency. The UK’s struggles in these fields, and the uneven, but certain path forward, is a decent guide, if presented with humility as well as pride, to encourage more down a path which only they can decide if it is for them.

Rt Hon Alistair Burt is Pro-Chancellor of Lancaster University, a Distinguished Fellow of RUSI, a Council Member of the European Council for Foreign Relations, and the UK’s Commissioner for the International Commission of Missing Persons. He was a Member of Parliament for thirty two years, and a Minister in three Conservative administrations, culminating in a role as Minister of State for the Middle East and North Africa at both the FCO and DFID.

[1] Anne Applebaum (2020). Twilight of Democracy-the failure of Politics and the Parting of Friends. London: Allen Lane.

[2] Ibid page 185/6

[3] Dr Graeme Ramshaw, Doing Development Democratically, The Foundations of Open Societies and Open Economies, WFD, September 2020, https://www.wfd.org/2020/09/15/doing-development-democratically-the-foundation-of-open-societies-and-open-economies/; See also :Daron Acemoglu, Suresh Naidu, James Robinson and Pascual Restre, Democracy and Economic Growth: New Evidence, Promarket, February 2018, https://promarket.org/democracy-economic-growth-new-evidence/

[4] Cabinet Office, 2021 Open Societies Statement, G7 Summit in Cornwall UK, July 2021, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/2021-open-societies-statement

[5] Global Partners Governance, Guide To Parliaments series-Paper 1 Why Engage with Parliaments?, 2013, https://gpgovernance.net/publications/paper-1-why-engage-with-parliaments-international-assistance-and-parliamentary-strengthening-an-overview/

[6] DFID and FCDO, Open Aid, open Societies: a vision for a transparent world, Gov.uk, February 2018, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/open-aid-open-societies-a-vision-for-a-transparent-world

[7] Rachel Kleinfield, Thomas Carothers, Steven Feldstein and Richard Younds, How Middle Power Democracies can help renovate global democracy Support, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, February 2021, https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/02/04/how-middle-power-democracies-can-help-renovate-global-democracy-support-pub-83809

[8] FCDO Statement April 21 2021.

[9] Peter Geoghegan, UK government plans 80% cuts to ‘world-leading anti-corruption work, Open Democracy, March 2021, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/uk-government-plans-80-cuts-to-world-leading-anti-corruption-work/

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Soft Power and the UK’s ‘force for good’ ambitions

Article by Stephen Twigg

‘Soft power’ is defined by the Cambridge English Dictionary as ‘the use of a country’s cultural and economic influence to persuade other countries to do something, rather than the use of military power’. The Integrated Review describes the United Kingdom as ‘a soft power superpower’ that has been ranked third in the world for soft power. The 2021 Global Soft Power Index, published by Brand Finance, places the UK third behind Germany and Japan.

Soft power has long been seen as an important asset by successive UK governments and commentators. The Integrated Review highlights four key areas of the UK’s soft power as media & culture, education, sport, and ‘people to people’ links. So, what are the challenges and opportunities in this area? I will draw upon my experience as the former Chairperson of the UK House of Commons International Development Committee as well as my current role as Secretary-General of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association. I will focus on the area of political/constitutional systems and values. These have usually had prominence in discussion around soft power both in the UK and internationally.

The Integrated Review explicitly connects soft power with a set of values to which the UK is committed. In exploring the relevance of the concept of soft power to the quest for open societies, it is worth considering some of the values to which there is a shared commitment before looking at the various institutions and networks through which these values might be reflected and implemented.

The Charter of the Commonwealth sets out 16 core values and principles as follows:[1]

Democracy
Human rights
International peace and security
Tolerance, respect and understanding
Freedom of Expression
Separation of Powers
Rule of Law
Good Governance
Sustainable Development
Protecting the Environment
Access to Health, Education, Food and Shelter
Gender Equality
Importance of Young People in the Commonwealth
Recognition of the Needs of Small States
Recognition of the Needs of Vulnerable States
The Role of Civil Society

These universal values and principles provide a helpful and comprehensive framework which can assist in the development of a forward-looking soft power strategy and in our consideration of the role of institutions, networks and citizens both in the United Kingdom and globally.

The Integrated Review sets out some of the well-established UK institutions which contribute to its soft power – including the BBC, the British Council, sports bodies, UK universities and the Monarchy. It also emphasises that the roots of a country’s soft power are often ‘beyond the ownership of government’.[2] Indeed, discussion around this topic has long emphasised the crucial importance of non-governmental actors in a country’s soft power strategy.

Nevertheless, there is no doubt that government priorities, policies and resources can help shape a country’s soft power impact. Indeed, the UK Government has demonstrated this with a series of high-profile Summits and other events, for example:

The 2016 Anti-Corruption Summit;
The 2018 Global Disability Summit co-hosted with the Government of Kenya and the International Disability Alliance;
The 2019 Global Conference for Media Freedom co-hosted with Canada and supported by Luminate;
The 2021 Global Education Summit co-hosted with Kenya for the replenishment of the Global Partnership for Education; and
‘Safe To Be Me – A Global Equality Conference’ on LGBT rights which is planned for 2022 to coincide with the 50^th anniversary of the first official London Pride March.

Each of these examples is rooted firmly in at least one of the values set out above – including human rights, freedom of expression, access to education and tolerance, respect and understanding. They demonstrate that governments absolutely can show leadership on important issues, but they also reinforce the importance of other (non-governmental) actors in shaping and delivering effective impact via soft power. I would emphasise three crucial factors here:

The importance of multilateral action to bring together an alliance of countries, institutions and networks to take an issue forward;
The vital role of citizens, civil society organisations and other stakeholders in maximising the impact of any strategy built around the notion of soft power; and
The importance of sustainability, which is partly about resources, partly political will and partly about whether an initiative is relevant to the lives of communities/citizens who, therefore, have a genuine stake in its success.

People to people engagement has great potential to contribute to positive social and economic change around the world. Technology has, in some ways, made this kind of work easier to organise and the COVID-19 pandemic has, of course, made virtual engagement much more normal although the digital divide remains an important challenge.

The British Council, which works in over 100 countries, has undertaken excellent, pioneering work in this sphere, particularly with young people. It is one of several institutions and networks working to promote education and empower young people. Critical to these organisations’ success is for them to be adaptable, agile and responsive to the needs of young people. Rightly, there is a strong desire for local ownership as communities and countries across the world address the question of how best to achieve shared commitments like sustainable development and tackling climate change. For the United Kingdom, its soft power will be exercised most fruitfully if it is listening to and engaging with citizens and communities both at home and internationally.

A strength for the United Kingdom’s soft power is the country’s diversity. As the Integrated Review points out, the UK’s population includes around nine and a half million people who were born outside the UK whilst there are around five million UK citizens living outside the country. Diaspora communities have the potential to contribute hugely to soft power. One important example of this is the social and economic impact of remittances sent from the UK by diaspora communities. Another example is the advocacy efforts by diaspora communities around a broad range of issues, including the impact of climate change, responses to natural disasters and human rights.

In highlighting diversity, it is important that the UK is open about its contemporary challenges and historical legacy. The credibility of soft power and ‘people to people’ engagement risks being undermined if issues like racism and the legacy of Empire are not addressed openly. Dialogue is essential here as there will be different perceptions in different countries about these issues and, therefore, an opportunity for countries like the UK to listen and learn from other voices.

The key here is for soft power to be exercised democratically. The movement for disability rights has often used the phrase “nothing about us without us”. If the UK (and others) are going to remain relevant global players, it is imperative that diverse voices are heard, listened to and acted upon – both in the UK itself and internationally. I hope that this will include a distinct recognition of the contribution made to soft power by all parts of the UK – Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as well as England; local government as well as central and, crucially, the work of communities at a local level. A brilliant example of soft power is the Scotland-Malawi Partnership which promotes friendship between the citizens and communities of Malawi and Scotland.

Encouragingly, the Integrated Review reaffirms the UK’s continued commitment to girls’ education. One of the highlights of my time as Chair of the UK House of Commons International Development Committee was to visit an inspiring Girls Education Challenge programme in Kenya which was enabling disabled girls to have access to education. Such programmes are the very best of international development and I hope that lessons will be learned from them as the UK and others take forward shared commitments to global education. Crucially, the voices of young people themselves need to be heard, listened to and acted upon.

Two important tools here are programmes for Citizenship/Civic Education and Education for Sustainable Development. The British Council’s “Connecting Classrooms through Global Learning” programme (supported by the FCDO) is a brilliant example of this work. With the International Development Committee, I saw many such examples where the UK’s investment in development, and humanitarian assistance has made a real difference – for example in supporting the Rohingya in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh or Syrian refugees in neighbouring countries.

Media freedom is emphasised in the Integrated Review including the Global Media Defence Fund co-founded by the UK and Canada. As the Review says, the BBC reaches a huge weekly audience and is an important strand of UK soft power. Its international charity, BBC Media Action, works in some of the world’s poorest countries with local communities to support sustainable development, help build democracy and to challenge misinformation. This kind of work is more important than ever as countries and communities address the challenges arising from the impact of COVID-19 and seek to achieve the ambitious goals in the UN’s Agenda 2030.

The Integrated Review emphasises the continued importance of multilateralism and the UK’s commitment to multilateral institutions. Effective coordination with other countries and with multilateral organisation is essential if the fruits of soft power are to be maximised. This is particularly true in the light of the decision to temporarily reduce the UK’s international development spending. Important opportunities arise from the focus on the Indo-Pacific. The renewed commitment to Africa is welcome and the document emphasises East Africa and Nigeria. Clearly, these are incredibly important partners for the UK, but so too are countries in Southern Africa, including South Africa, Zambia and Malawi, and West African countries like Ghana, Sierra Leone and Gambia. I hope that the UK will continue to engage throughout the continent and keep playing its part in supporting sustainable development across Africa as a whole.

This brings me to the Commonwealth. There is a huge opportunity here for the UK to give greater priority in its work to its relationships with Commonwealth nations, institutions, networks and citizens. The set of values and principles listed earlier are drawn from the Commonwealth Charter. I have highlighted areas in which the UK works closely with other Commonwealth countries such as global education with Kenya or media freedom with Canada. There is a diverse mix of expertise, talent and potential throughout the Commonwealth which is reflected in its institutions, networks and civil society organisations. The Commonwealth itself has significant soft power which it exercises across key areas of work including women’s empowerment, tackling climate change, and supporting young people. Around 60 per cent of Commonwealth citizens are aged under 30.

Many of the countries in Asia and the Pacific are members of the Commonwealth including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand, as well as Small Island Developing States across the Pacific and elsewhere. There is a wealth of experience in these Commonwealth countries in addressing key challenges like poverty reduction, sustainable economic development and tackling climate change. There is a vibrant array of Commonwealth organisations and networks working to promote ‘open societies’ including the Commonwealth Foundation, the Commonwealth Local Government Forum, the Commonwealth Equality Network and the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative as well as the organisation where I work, the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA).

In the same way that ‘people to people’ links are an important strand of ‘soft power’ so too are the connections between parliamentarians in different countries or between local government, business or trades unions at an international level. Networks within the Commonwealth provide excellent examples of how these links can be forged and the role that they can play in promoting shared commitments such as the United Nations Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. In the field of education, the Commonwealth Scholarships scheme is a superb example of best practice.

At the CPA, we deploy a variety of tools to promote mutual learning between our member parliaments and encourage the adoption of best practice in line with both the Commonwealth Charter and the UN’s Agenda 2030. For example, we have three networks which address key priorities: our Small Branches serving jurisdictions with a population of up to 500,000; the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians network; and Commonwealth Parliamentarians with Disabilities.

In conclusion, the United Kingdom has a diverse range of institutions and networks which contribute to its soft power. Many of these are highly respected organisations like the BBC and the British Council with a long-established reputation and wide reach. Nevertheless, it is important that institutions are agile and adaptable so that they can meet the challenges of today – and tomorrow. Governments have a vital leadership role to play, but a lot of soft power is exercised not directly by governments but by citizens, networks and independent institutions. For example, diaspora communities and young people should feature prominently in any future consideration of a ‘soft power strategy’. Crucially, in a complex and interdependent world, ‘soft power’ will have more impact if it is shared both within countries and between countries through networks and institutions like the United Nations and the Commonwealth. By working with other countries, the UK is most likely to be able to fulfil the ambition to be ‘a force for good’.

Stephen Twigg is Secretary-General of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association. He previously served as the Labour and Co-operative Member of Parliament for Liverpool, West Derby from 2010 until 2019. He was the Chair of the UK House of Commons International Development Select Committee from June 2015 until December 2019. Between 2005 and 2010 he served as Director of the Foreign Policy Centre. He also worked for the Holocaust Centre and the Aegis Trust. He also previously served as Member of Parliament for Enfield Southgate from 1997-2005. His ministerial and shadow ministerial roles have included Deputy Leader of the House of Commons, Education Minister, Shadow Education Secretary, Shadow Foreign Minister and Shadow Justice Minister.

Image by Number 10 under (CC).

[1] The Commonwealth, Commonwealth Charter, 2013, https://thecommonwealth.org/about-us/charter

[2] HM Government, Global Britain in a competitive age: The Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy, March 2021, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/975077/Global_Britain_in_a_Competitive_Age-_the_Integrated_Review_of_Security__Defence__Development_and_Foreign_Policy.pdf

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Bringing politics back in: The implications of the FCDO’s focus on open societies for diplomacy and development

Article by Graham Teskey and Tom Wingfield

What differentiates an ‘open society’

What are open societies? The famed camel comes to mind: open societies may be hard to define but they are easy to recognise. Given the current importance of open societies in UK foreign policy, it is timely and important to consider a little more closely the nature of open societies, how they come about, and how external partners can support the long-run historical process by which societies become increasingly open.[1]

The term ‘open societies’ is a relatively recent one in political science, although it has some particularly influential proponents. It was first coined by the French philosopher Henri Bergson in 1932 (ssociété ouverte). He described it as a dynamic system inclined to moral universalism standing in contrast to closed societies, which have a closed system of law, morality or religion. It is static “like a closed mind”. For Karl Popper, the single crucial distinguishing feature of an open society is the individual: he defined an open society as one “in which individual is confronted with personal decisions”.[2] Popper added that only democracy provides an institutional mechanism for reform and leadership change without the need for bloodshed, revolution or coup d’état.

Our starting point is defining ‘society’ and understanding the rights of citizens and the role of politics. There is indeed such a thing as society, but it is heterogeneous and made up of competing and contested interests. Sometimes these interests are individual, sometimes they are communal (i.e. they represent a particular community or group). The one thing that differentiates ‘more’ open societies from ‘less’ open ones is that these competing interests are mediated and negotiated through peaceful, transparent and (largely) respectful inclusive processes. In such societies, this contestation is managed through a political process where people feel their interests are represented and political choices are openly negotiated and, ultimately, made in some idea of the ‘public interest’. The recent debate in the West on whether COVID-19 vaccinations should be mandatory or not illustrates the tension between individual rights (my right not to be vaccinated) and collective, public interests (our right not to be infected by the unvaccinated). This trade-off, this decision, in an open society is mediated through a political process, enshrined in law or government policy, and – it is hoped – accepted by citizens. Responding to COVID is thus an extremely current example of the tension that open societies must address: where does the interest of the individual end and the interest of ‘society’ (which is the aggregation of individuals/social classes/ethnicities in a polity) begin? Political philosophy and history will determine the answer to this question.

Where does politics fit in?

Open societies tolerate – welcome even – difference and diversity, debate and discussion, dissent, and discourse. The explicit adoption of the term ‘open societies’ suggests an implicit focus on ‘society’ rather than the ‘state’, with which the term is often paired in political science writing. History demonstrates that ‘the state’ does not necessarily pursue the interests of ‘individuals’ in society: rather it will privilege the interests of the state as interpreted by the political elite. In some –possibly many – developing countries the state is controlled by narrow sets of powerful interests and is often extractive and authoritarian. These states seem to be more ‘closed’ than ‘open’, which is often a clear choice as part of a strategy of ruling elites to maintain their dominance.

Politics lies at the heart of an ‘open society’. Politics is where the interests of individuals and interest groups are mediated, negotiated and where compromise is reached. It is where decisions are made and where choices and trade-offs are managed. In ‘open societies’ individual citizens have a voice: the views of individuals are represented in the political decisions that affect their lives. This gives the individual a stake in the system – even when decisions taken in the broader public interest go against their individual preference. This creates a sense of belonging and social cohesion. By contrast, where individuals – or their representatives – do not have a voice or a stake, they may disengage, resort to violence, or find solace in extremism, either religious or nationalist.

The UK has a long tradition of thinking about the relationship between the individual and the state, from the ending of feudalism, the people’s movements at the end of the 17^th century to the establishment of the commonwealth and the eventual restoration of the monarchy. Today this issue continues to play out in the US, the UK, Europe, and in many developing countries. States are now grappling with the COVID pandemic, and in the longer-term are grappling with the challenge of delivering economic and social development outcomes. As regards the former, some have argued that COVID has allowed states to extend their powers at the expense of ‘individual freedoms’.[3] Regarding the latter, the ‘China variant’ (its political model and state-led approach to economic growth, not the virus…) has attracted interest from many governments. While the two things may not be connected, there certainly is convincing evidence that over the past two decades, the ‘openness’ of many societies has shrunk.[4]

‘Open societies’ carry two immediate implications, the one substantive and the other procedural. Substantively, open societies demand consideration of the norms and values that influence if not determine individual and collective human behaviour. These norms and values (difference, debate, and dissent) directly affect how we think and how we see the world. This substantive element is strongly normative: we believe these values are universal, and everyone, regardless of place of birth, deserves the right – if they so choose – to be different, to debate and to dissent.

But in order to function, open societies require a set of procedures – the settled ‘rules of the game’. These rules of the game will structure and manage the processes and mechanisms whereby the different – and yes, competing – interests of diverse groups of individuals can be mediated and negotiated, and ultimately, where compromise and consensus can be reached.

At a high level, organic laws and constitutions determine how power is allocated. Other laws set out procedures under the principles set out in the constitution. In common law systems without a written constitution, ‘precedent’ is the critical factor ensuring every person receives the same justice.

Open societies are societies governed by consent rather than by command; by impersonal rules, rather than patronage and ad hoc favour. In open societies, citizens give their consent to those holding political power by means of periodic elections, held with universal suffrage. The quid pro quo underlying citizens granting powers to state authorities is that decisions are made in the interests of the common good; the so-called public interest. Despite being routinely abused by politicians pursuing their own narrow interests, there really is such a thing as the public interest: decisions and policies that benefit the many rather than the few. Further, citizens in open societies enjoys two sets of freedoms: first ‘freedom to’ express their views, practice their faith, keep the property they legitimately own, join a union, open businesses and reap the rewards of success (on indeed failure); and second, ‘freedom from’ fear of violence, persecution, and arbitrary state interference in their lives.

The importance of ideas and their impact on institutions

Open societies evolve because of ideas being debated, contested (which we know can be violent), and over time, accepted and absorbed into the body politic. ‘Good politics’ is a battle of ideas as the basis for the allocation of resources. ‘Bad politics’ is a bidding war for patronage and largesse, irrespective of principle or policy.

When ideas become shared and accepted within ‘society’, citizens collaborate to create institutions which enable those ideas to be put into practice and to handle diversity and choice. These institutions take two forms: first, the formal institutions such as constitutions, national assemblies, political parties, parliaments, local governments, electoral commissions, and ombudspersons; and second, the informal institutions, many of which are layered on previous formal and informal institutions, such as the norms and values that underpin the operation and functioning of formal institutions (losers’ consent, tolerance and respect for the views of people that see the world differently, and the willingness to be held accountable for decisions or actions taken).

In turn these institutions create incentives and constraints on how citizens behave and which, in turn, deliver outcomes – in this case, functioning and sustainable open societies (see the schematic on the right).[5] This simple representation summarises why ideas are so important: ideas that become dominant in any society have a habit of being translated into sets of formal and informal institutions that create incentives for behaviour and thus societal outcomes. If dominant ideas in any society start with the state and its pre-eminence, then the institutions it creates tend to reflect this and reinforce incentives militating against openness.

It is not melodramatic to argue that globally, we are currently seeing a battle for ideas and a clash of institutions. It was never likely that the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 would constitute the end of history; it’s just that the battle of ideas and what institutions we want to live by has taken a new and different turn. Key to this is distinguishing between different types of political systems and the way decisions are made. This ranges from responsive, one-party systems with elite internal decision-making (China, Vietnam, Singapore), through hybrid regimes or ‘flawed’ democracies (Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria), to rule by dictat (Myanmar, Russia) and on to associational democracy and political deliberation (Switzerland).

Those working in ‘diplomacy and development’ – by which is meant promoting a more equitable global economy – have no choice but to engage with ideas and institutions. It is likely that most practitioners already do so, but unknowingly. Worse, and unintentionally, actions can be taken which undermine open societies by meddling with the social contract and working around domestic political processes. In more authoritarian or predatory states, externally funded service delivery can take the heat out of the social contract and provide international legitimacy to illegitimate regimes. In more open political systems, it can undermine politics and political accountability by removing the discretion of elected leaders through earmarking funds and constructing parallel ‘project implementation units’ to deliver ‘results’. It is time therefore to articulate how external partners can design and deliver investments which strengthen those institutions which that form the core of Open Societies.

It falls to three sets of institutions to protect, deepen, and sustain open societies:

The institutions and the organisations that produce, collate, analysis and disseminate data and information. Data and information must be transparent and accessible to all. Disinformation will undermine open societies. Citizens need to be able to tell the difference and debate the data, and civil society needs the space and freedoms necessary to demand information and share their views;
Institutions that foster open, inclusive, transparent, contestable, and accountable political decision-making in the public interest based on evidence and reasoning. Open societies are founded on open politics where political decision-making – and debates over options and trade-offs – are both transparent and inclusive. These are the institutions that enable citizens to use information to hold public servants, the private sector, civil society leaders, and politicians (especially politicians) to account for what they say and for what they do. At heart this constitutes the political process – where interests of all individuals and groups are mediated and negotiated. Open societies are founded on open, inclusive, and accountable politics; and
Institutions that foster the rule of law, not the rule by law. In open societies rules and laws are impersonal and inclusive – they apply to all, regardless of status, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender or religion. They are tabled, debated, and enacted by duly elected representatives in national and subnational legislatures, and such laws apply to all, regardless of status or rank. These laws codify the rights of citizens and are enforced by the ‘coercive yet independent’ infrastructure of the state – the police, the courts, and the judiciary. This is the opposite of states where the governed are ruled by law – where laws are issued by command of governors, usually to advance or protect their own interests.

These three sets of institutions are mutually dependent. Accountability requires that both information and the rule of law to be accessible, contestable, and transparent. They are also mutually reinforcing; and stand or fall together, as shown in the schematic on the right.

Neither can these institutions be bought. The UK’s legal history runs to a thousand years. Free and fair elections under universal suffrage had to be fought for – especially for women. Emily Davison famously died for the vote.

The Open Societies Agenda has implications for the political process, how political decisions are implemented by the administration and how the state operates. It has implications for the economy, where the rule of law encourages entrepreneurs to start up business without fearing that the state will appropriate their assets or steal any profits they make. Open societies encourage business to engage in cross-border trade without having to bribe customs officers or port officials. Should businesses infringe against the rightful laws, rules, and regulations governing the economy, the owners of capital know they have access to fair legal redress.

Open societies have implications for how public services are designed and delivered. Open societies seek to engage public servants based on merit, rather than patronage or the ‘old boys’ network’. The governed expect equality of opportunity in accessing services such as education, health, water, and sanitation. The values and norms fostered by open societies generate expectations of fairness and equal treatment among the governed. If the governors do not meet these expectations, they will be held accountable at the next election.

It is in both the fact and functioning of these three sets of institutions that legitimate open societies. Citizens in open societies confer legitimacy upon not only the overall political system, but also on the current government of the day. They do this based on the intrinsic value of these institutions, as well as their instrumental value in leading to more and better development outcomes. However, it is in the instrumentalisation of open societies that their greatest challenge lies. It is clear from the evidence that, given the choice, most people prefer to live in open societies; they like to exercise their agency in choosing who rules them. But while being ruled by consent is more intrinsically appealing than being ruled by command, governance and institutional arrangements in practice reflect underlying economic and social power relations. As these underlying conditions change, they create a challenge to existing governance arrangements. Although open societies are often associated with high income countries, there is no intrinsic link between an open society and economic growth.

Few countries, if any, have reached high income status by first embracing the full (emphasise full) range of open society institutions outlined above. The UK, the US and Australia certainly did not. Historically, where and when new states have been formed – due to war and violence, urbanisation and migration, growth, new technology or the depletion of natural resources – demands for governance change is triggered. Political change often comes as new social classes seek a voice to match their new economic and social power.

The so-called ‘third-wave’ of democratisation that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 has stalled. The 2020 Annual Report of the US-based Freedom House noted that 2019 was the fourteenth consecutive year of decline in global freedom. The many and various ‘colour revolutions’ failed to deliver the (admittedly unrealistic) developmental expectations of the governed in those countries.

Herein therefore lies the challenge facing societies governed by consent. On the one hand they may intuitively be more compelling: to a great extent they remove the threat of arbitrary, unjustified, and prejudicial interference in the lives of the governed. But on the other hand their record in delivering material progress and better development outcomes for the governed – today, in the here and now, and in the period demanded by duly elected by time-poor governors – is not as compelling.

The implications for FCDO and external actors

If external partners wish to promote open societies, they must focus on understanding – and if plausible – strengthening the institutions which characterise them. This is easy to say but hard to do. It requires:

Humility: the influence of even the best external actors will be marginal. Diplomacy and aid cannot ‘deliver’ an open society. At best, external actors will start by understanding how power is organised, where the plausible sources of positive change lie; and tuck in behind locally-driven change processes. This also points to the value of developing long-term, trust-based relationships with key actors. It can provide the wisdom and legitimacy necessary for external actors to play a positive role;
Distinguishing the form of a formal organisation within a wider institutional setting (say an election commission) with its function (how it delivers its remit, and if it has the independence, legitimacy, capacity, and authority to undertake its formal tasks);
Avoiding ‘perfect institutions’ or exporting neo-liberal, democratic models: there is a vast graveyard of failed governance interventions based on externally-imposed solutions, hubris and optimism bias. The starting point should be understanding the context, what is locally relevant and building partnerships around shared interests (not assuming shared values); and
Focus on diplomacy and ‘a whole of portfolio approach’: More often than not, external actors can undermine the basic elements of an open society with orthodox development programmes (health, climate, infrastructure, growth) that bypass the political process and provide unearned resources which ‘take the heat out of’ the social contract and reinforce patronage. Further, there are clear instances where corrupt and/or military dominated governments benefit from military/security assistance from one arm of an external partner government and democracy assistance from another, the former undermining the latter. To stay true to its foreign policy objective, the FCDO should start with country strategy, assess individual programmes for unintended consequences and commit to a time-bound, measurable realignment if required.

The ‘new’ agenda of open societies and the three institutions summarised above must not fully eclipse the ‘old’ agenda of effective states designed to improve policy settings, resource allocation, and public service systems functionality. The good news is that there is contemporary evidence which points towards one unequivocal starting point for donor policy formulation and programme design: that growing intra-state inequality undermines both the intrinsic values of open societies and the instrumental development outcomes delivered by effective states. By working in ways that supports partner country political processes and efforts to address collective, public interests and internal inequalities, external partners will simultaneously be legitimating and promoting the intrinsic values of open societies as well as helping reduce poverty.

Graham Teskey is the Principal Global Lead for Governance for Abt Associates, based in Canberra Australia. Before joining Abt Associates in 2015, Graham was the Principal Governance Specialist for the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs, where his role was to advise DFAT on its governance and public sector programs across the full aid program. Prior to moving to Canberra Graham was Senior Adviser and Head of the Governance and Anti-Corruption Secretariat Governance at the World Bank. Before joining the World Bank Graham spent 16 years with DFID and enjoyed postings to Fiji, Kenya and Uganda. In 1996 he helped establish DFID’s ‘Governance and Institutions Department’. His last two DFID Senior Civil Service posts were in London as Head of Africa Policy Department and Head of Governance and Social Development. Graham began his career as an economist in the Central Planning Office in Fiji, which was followed by appointments in the National Planning and Statistics Office in Vanuatu, in Rukwa region in South-West Tanzania with NORAD, and a lectureship teaching development studies at the University of Bradford in the UK. Graham has degrees in economics, planning and business administration.

Tom Wingfield is the Senior Advisor for Governance for Abt Associates based in London. Alongside Abt’s Global Governance Lead (Graham Teskey), Tom leads the governance practice at Abt. He serves as project director for the FCDO Good Governance Fund: Eastern Partnership Technical Assistance Facility in Ukraine. Before joining Abt, Tom was a Senior Governance Adviser in DFID/FCDO for 18 years. He held a range of senior leadership roles, including leading governance and service delivery teams in Nepal and Cambodia and the governance, conflict and social development research team in London. He has been at the forefront of aid reform and improving development impact through learning and adaptation in fragile and conflict-affected countries. This included co-leading FCDO’s (then DFID) ‘better delivery’ reforms and the Smart Rules in 2014-15. He also helped establish an innovative partnership with FCDO Nepal, SOAS University of London, and Yale University testing UK country strategy with independent research. Prior to joining DFID, Tom was a Lecturer in Southeast Asian Politics at the University of Leeds. He began his career in journalism writing on business and politics in Indochina, Myanmar and Thailand. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v2.0.

[1] This is not to say that history is teleological. It merely points out that modern day ‘open societies’ reached this point as the result of a centuries long, hard-won struggle.

[2] Karl Popper. 1945. ‘The Open Society and its enemies’.

[3] See The Economist, The Long Goodbye, 3 July 2021: p 11.

[4] Carothers, Thomas and Benjamin Press. Understanding Protests in Authoritarian States. SAIS Review of International Affairs, vol. 40 no. 2, 2020: 15-24.

[5] Acknowledgement to Wayne A Leighton and Edward J Lopez for the original formulation of this schematic. See ‘Madmen, Intellectuals and Academic Scribblers: The Economic Engine of Political Change’, Stanford Economics, 2013, page 133.

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