The past five years have shown a categorical disregard for the human rights of the people of Greece by international creditors. We have witnessed a disregard by states, including notably eurozone states, as well as by European institutions and the IMF, of their human rights obligations when crafting conditionalities. There is a long list of deplorable developments that this European catastrophe has exposed (the catastrophe is Europe’s even if the resulting harms at this point impact Greece) including coercion in the negotiation and conclusion of agreements, ongoing attempts at regime change, and the hollowing out of national democracy (among other examples, the statement of the Euro Summit of 12 July requires Greece ‘to consult and agree with the Institutions on all draft legislation in relevant areas … before submitting it … to Parliament ’). There are many other indefensible developments, including the enactment of extreme neoliberal policies relentlessly challenged by economists on their own terms, for taking the wrong approach to promoting growth and investment. Under the conditionalities set out in the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) of 11 August 2015 for receipt of the third bailout, court rulings that may require the reversal of spending cuts – for example where social rights violations are found – are framed as ‘fiscal risks’, and the MoU requires a commitment from the Greek government ‘to take offsetting measures as needed to meet the fiscal targets’. Greece has suffered years of recession under the Troika’s austerity plans of 2010 and 2012 accompanied by widespread social malaise. In this new phase, we are also seeing all branches of government that might interfere with the creditors plans rendered ineffectual in breach of the most fundamental requirements of democracy and the rule of law.
In the past five years – the Troika years – Greece has seen budget cuts that have been followed by a 200% rise in the incidence of HIV/AIDS, the return of mother-to-child transmission of HIV (health cuts have meant routine screens are no longer conducted on pregnant women), the return of malaria, drastic labour market reforms, a rise in unemployment, especially among the young and women, and violations of the right to social security. Even an IMF Research Paper of 2013 challenged austerity in finding that ‘fiscal consolidation [austerity] typically raises income inequality, raises long-term unemployment and lowers the share of wage income’. It is thus deeply disingenuous to see in the latest MoU the statement that ‘The economic crisis has had an unprecedented impact on social welfare’. It is the response to the economic crisis that has crushed the people of Greece and brought the new government – elected on an anti-austerity platform – to its knees. What we are seeing is a total disregard for the political rights of the people of Greece not to mention their right to any reasonable form of economic self-determination.
For today I put many of these issues aside to focus on one matter in particular: the failures of the international creditors to undertake human rights impact assessments in the area of socio-economic rights. Read the rest of this entry…
