Human Rights and Austerity: The IMF as a Handmaiden of Neoliberalism
By Marco Stojanovik
I. Introduction: Human Rights vs. IMF Imposed Austerity
The theory of human rights can be used as a framework to ethically reform aspects of the global financial system. In particular, austerity measures that negatively impact human rights need reform. A human rights framework can be applied to the austerity-based conditionalities of loans given by international financial institutions (IFIs), in particular the IMF. In this way the most vulnerable are protected while economic growth is still attained. This argument is advanced in four subsequent sections.
Section II demonstrates human rights legitimacy in the global political-economic arena. In its practical legal form it is codified in international human rights treaties and other instruments adopted since the end of the Second World War. Theoretically rights exist in moral and political forms to justify this legal framework.
Section III demonstrates the interaction between human rights and the economy. Economic science generally supports the notion that securing socio-economic rights will have positive impacts for the economy with gains being shared. Yet these rights are rarely promoted or practiced. Rather neoliberal polices in which the state’s role is limited are currently enacted around the world. Rather than the state actively pursuing socio-economic rights, it is widely believed in conventional policy and thinking that human welfare will develop over time as free markets aggregate and distribute wealth. The human rights effects of this approach, however, have been catastrophic with widening global inequality, periodic financial instability, and sovereign debt crises.
Section IV examines these human rights impacts in greater detail by focusing on Greece as a case study post the 2008 global financial crisis (GFC) and resulting sovereign debt crisis. It examines the human rights situation in the country following the implementation of austerity-based policies in the severe years of the crisis (2010-2014) as per the conditions of the loans of various international financial institutions (IFIs), in particular, the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Section V argues that in situations such as Greece, less powerful states desperate for debt relief hold little bargaining power in loan negotiations. They therefore should not hold sole responsibility for the human rights breaches that result from austerity-based policies included as conditionalities in loans. IFIs like the IMF too need to be held accountable.
Section VI concludes by briefly reviewing the approach of the IMF towards austerity-based conditionalities on loans since the crisis in Greece. Reforms are recommended for the practice of the IMF and other IFIs to ensure accountability moving forward.
II. International Human Rights Legal Framework and Theoretical Justifications
Human rights are a complex phenomenon with multiple parts (Forst, 2010). Practically, they exist in legal form, enshrined in international declarations, treaties, and covenants, and in national constitutions and laws. Theoretically they exist in moral and political forms to justify this legal framework. In their moral form they are justified as universal entitlements all humans possess by virtue of our common humanity. In their political form, they are defined by their role or function in the global political arena. Ultimately a full understanding of international human rights cannot be informed without a comprehensive exploration of these three forms and how they complement one another.
A. Legal Frameworks
In its first form, the concept of human rights is codified legally in international human rights treaties and other instruments adopted since 1945. The United Nations emerged following the horror of the Second World War and the atrocities of the Jewish Holocaust to ensure adequate protection against any future government violations. Human rights standards were placed centrally in the United Nations Charter (1945) and in 1948 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) elucidated the “basic civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights that all human beings should enjoy.” Two treaties followed to make the declaration legally binding: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).
Together, the UDHR, ICCPR, and ICESCR are known as the International Bill of Rights and cover the fundamental social goods essential to stable societies. Civil-political rights protect the individual against the power of states and include the right to a fair trial, democratic accountability, and freedom of speech, among others. These rights are referred to as negative rights as they require states to refrain from interfering with individual liberties (Vasak, 1977). Economic, social, and cultural rights are those necessary for an adequate standard of living such as the right to work, the right to social security, and the rights to education, health, shelter, and food. These rights are called positive rights because they are not directly possessed by individuals but rather require states to take action to respect and implement them (Vasak, 1977).The two core covenants of the International Bill of Rights are ratified by the vast majority of states and reflected in their constitutions and specific laws that formally protect basic human rights.
Several regional inter-governmental organisations have also established their own legal frameworks (Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2003).These frameworks consist of instruments (e.g. treaties, conventions, declarations) that take into account particular human rights concerns of the region and specific mechanisms (e.g. commissions, special rapporteurs, courts) to implement them. The three most well-established regional human rights frameworks exist in Europe, the Americas and Africa.
The Council of Europe is the European continent’s largest and oldest human rights organisation with 47 member states and the most developed instruments and mechanisms. The organisation includes instruments such as the European Convention on Human Rights (1953) for civil and political rights and the European Social Charter (1965) for social and economic rights. Corresponding mechanisms -the European Court of Human Rights and the European Committee of Social Rights – monitor and judge on whether member states comply, in law and practice, with the provisions of the respective instruments.
In the Americas, human rights are chiefly promoted by the Organization of American States consisting of 35 member states. The OAS’s American Convention on Human Rights (1969) recognises core civil and political rights. Social and economic rights are incorporated under the separate 1st Protocol (1988). The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights is the OAS’s official mechanism to monitor the compliance of member states with their human rights obligations. It conducts investigations, publishes reports, and makes recommendations.
The African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (1981) recognises civil and political rights, economic and social rights, and group rights. The charter established the Organisation of African Unity, replaced in 2002 by the African Union consisting of 55 member states. The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights is the African Union’s mechanism to evaluate complaints, conduct fact-finding missions, and issue recommendations based on its findings.
B. Theoretical Justifications
Since the birth of the UDHR, a number of theories justify its claims. Philosophical theories conceive of human rights in its moral form: entitlements all humans possess by virtue of our common humanity (Fagan, n.d.)[1]
Human rights rest on abstract essential features of what it means to be human and determine the specifiable duties we owe each other as human beings. These rights are universal and timeless, theorised independently of the international human rights legal framework. This approach thus offers a moral standard to secure international legal protection through the criticism of certain currently institutionalized rights or the identification of new ones that ought to be recognized (Schaffer & Maliks, 2017, p. 4).
Philosophers differ on exactly what the abstract features are that make it essential to be ‘human’. Approaches include ideals such as human reason, dignity, needs, capabilities, agency, and interests. Despite the differing approaches, however, all moral justifications fundamentally focus on human rights as a means to guarantee essential minimal conditions for human well-being (Forst 2010, p. 713).
Political theorists, on the other hand, do not conceptualise human rights as based on universal features of humanity essential to live a good life.[2] Rather they define human rights in political form – the role or function of rights in modern international politics – to specify standards of political legitimacy and limits on national sovereignty (Rawls, 1999; Raz, 2010; Beitz, 2009). These standards determine the state’s primary obligation to protect the urgent interests of individuals over whom they exercise sovereign power. If a state fails in its responsibility to prevent gross violations of human rights, the international community may legitimately intervene or assist in its internal affairs. Thus, political theories clarify the concept of human rights in the role rights play in protecting individuals against the abuse of sovereign power. This approach does not just accept current laws and doctrine but critically evaluates the practice in terms of this purpose (Schaffer and Maliks, 2017, p. 4).
Several authors suggest philosophical and political theories are compatible despite differing approaches. They complement one another to form a full theory of human rights that mediates between moral entitlements and the existing international human rights discourse (Gilabert 2011; Liao & Etinson 2012; Shaffer & Maliks, 2017, p. 5). Philosophical conceptions focus on important features of human life that ground human rights, while political notions focus on their international function and who is responsible for protecting and promoting these rights. In this way, the existing legal framework of international human rights is ethically justified to be applied in the world to ensure stable societies and sustainable economies (Wachenfeld et al., 2016).
III. Human Rights and the Economy
Economics generally supports the principle that securing socio-economic rights have positive impact on the economy and on the sharing of economic gains. Ramirez (2011, pp. 718-726) shows a fundamental consistency between economic human rights and macroeconomic performance. Empowering individuals by investing in human capital, reducing inequality, and building institutions that harness human talent is central to economic growth. Governments can invest in people by providing adequate education and standards of living including food, housing, and medical care, as well as assistance for mothers and children. Individuals who have equal opportunity to accumulate and actualise human capital free from discrimination are encouraged to take risks that lead to innovations and ultimately macroeconomic growth and stability.
Despite the evidence, however, upholding economic rights is rarely promoted or practiced in the global economy as a means to secure greater growth and development. The neglect may be due to scepticism emanating from capitalist ideologies. Initially, economic rights were included in the UDHR primarily at the insistence of the former Soviet Union. As such they were viewed by the United States and its first-world allies as the product of communist ideology and prioritised less than civil and political rights (Ramirez, 2011, p. 720; Murphy, 1972).
Today under capitalism’s ubiquitous variant, neoliberalism, socio-economic rights have no real substantive policy or legal implication (Darrow, 2003). States are obliged to realize these rights gradually and progressively and so it can be difficult to measure their fulfilment. In cases where violations are demonstrable, rulings by relevant international mechanisms are issued as recommendations with no binding consequences or enforcement. As such, these rights remain mostly aspirational in nature. It is widely believed these rights will aggregate over time as the neoliberal approach is followed. Deregulation, rapid privatisation, free trade and global financial markets are forecast to produce optimal outcomes in terms of the allocation of the world’s capital and other economic resources delivering sustained prosperity for all (Wachenfeld et al., 2016, p. 16; Mitchell, 2011). In this model, the state’s role reduces to “create and preserve an institutional framework appropriate to such practices” (Harvey, 2005, p. 3). This means withdrawing from many areas of social provision and the positive actions needed to implement socio-economic rights.
Yet, the neoliberal promise for distributed welfare gains has not actualised. Despite the growth in aggregate global wealth over recent decades, global inequality has only increased and periodic financial instability has had serious impacts on global social welfare. Indeed, Way et al. (2014, p. 86) argue the 2008 GFC is “one of the greatest contemporary challenges facing the realization and implementation of economic and social rights worldwide”. Systemic flaws in national and international monetary and financial architecture were exposed as a credit crisis in the global financial system in 2007 quickly spread to generally damage the rest of the global economy. Massive social harms resulted across the world. Economic and social rights to food, shelter, water, healthcare, education, and other social protections were undermined through the harm done to jobs, incomes and livelihoods, and the effects of the crisis on state finance (Way et. al., 2014; Wachenfeld et al., 2016).
Even greater human rights violations occurred as numerous states then adopted austerity measures in response to economic difficulties. Austerity is a form of “voluntary deflation in which the economy adjusts through the reduction of wages, prices and public spending to restore competitiveness, which is supposedly best achieved by cutting the state’s budget, debts, and deficits” (Stuckler & Basu, 2013, p. 86). By 2010 in the United States, the United Kingdom, as well as in the Eurozone countries of Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy, and pre-emptively across the developing world, a number of contractionary polices were adopted in order to cut public deficits, revitalise the economy and gain financial market confidence (Salomon, 2015, p. 532; Lusiani & Saiz, 2013, pp. 15-17). The IMF supported these policies, which typically consisted of cuts in public social expenditures, reductions in social protection programs including pension schemes, reductions in labour protections in the name of boosting competitiveness, selective tax hikes, and the privatisation of public services (Lusiani & Saiz, 2013, pp. 15-17; Way et. al., 2014, p. 89). Rights to work, adequate standards of living, social security and social protection, housing, food, water, education, and health all suffered as a result (United Nations General Assembly [UNGA], 2019, pp. 12-13; Lusiani & Saiz, 2013, pp. 17-20). Existing inequalities were exacerbated as those most vulnerable were hurt the most – including minorities, migrants, children, youth, old people, and those with disabilities (Lusiani & Saiz, 2013, pp. 22-23).
Many economists question the economic soundness of austerity enacted during times of financial crisis. The consequences are the very phenomena the measures are designed to prevent. Recessions become deeper and longer, unemployment levels deteriorate, government revenues reduce, and thus government deficits increase (Way et al., 2014, p. 91). Krugman (2016) shows how countries forced into severe austerity following the GFC experienced very severe downturns in their GDP more or less proportional to the degree of austerity. Rather, strong evidence suggests public stimulus was the major source of economic growth during the crisis (Mitchell, 2011).
The response to the crisis was built on a series of neoliberal myths to roll back the state – the same myths that caused the crisis (Mitchell, 2011). O’Connell (2012, p 61) argues “austerity has little or nothing to do with objective, economic necessity, but instead is driven by an ideological and political project to further entrench neoliberal capitalism”. Hundreds of billions of dollars financed by the austerity cuts were pumped into the foreign banks at the root of the crisis in order to recapitalise them. The costs of the crisis then fell disproportionately on the poor, vulnerable and working people. The next section explores the human rights impacts on these groups in greater detail by looking at Greece as a case study.
IV. The Human Rights Impact of Austerity in Greece
Greece was the first of a number of EU nations to receive conditional financial assistance to address its high sovereign debt. From May 2010, on the verge of financial collapse, Greece was forced to resort to outside assistance from the IMF and Eurozone Member States. Under multiple Memorandums of Understanding negotiated and monitored by the so-called ‘Troika’– the European Commission (EC), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the IMF– loans were provided under the strict conditionality requirement of implementing austerity-based polices. The proclaimed aims were to redress imbalances in public finances, reduce external debt and restore competitiveness so as to prevent economic collapse and stabilise the Greek economy (Salomon, 2015, p. 525).
Terms included massive cuts to public sector staff and salaries, reductions in pensions, a reduction of the minimum wage by 22%, weakening of labour protections, myriad cuts to social benefits, as well as the introduction of a slew of new taxes impacting the poor and working people the most (O’Connell, 2012, p. 65). Privatisation of vast sections of the public sector was also a core aspect of the required measures. This included water services, rail, gas, mobile telecoms, airports, motorways and the state electricity company (Hall, 2011). The measures have been described by commentators as providing a “‘massive transfer of wealth from the public to the private sector through privatizations of public enterprises” (Katrougalos, 2013), and as “a savage assault on the living standards of ordinary Greek citizens” (O’Connell, 2012, p. 65). The measures have led to egregious breaches of socio-economic rights through their impacts on employment and working conditions, poverty rates, and social services.
Firstly, rights to work and at work were breached as unemployment drastically rose and regressive labour reforms were implemented. According to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) (2016, p. 15) one million jobs were lost between 2009 and 2016. This included 234,847 public sector staff cuts and more than 600,000 jobs lost in the closure of an estimated 230,000 small to medium-sized enterprises. Unemployment rose sharply from 6.6% in May 2008 to peak at 27.8% in July 2013 (CEIC Data, n.d.).
Labour reforms meanwhile were implemented with the aim of increasing competitiveness and supporting business development. These reforms severely weakened the role of trade unions and threatened the rights at work of those who remained employed (Lusiani & Saiz, 2013, pp. 16-18; UNGA, 2019, p. 12). This included the rights to fair remuneration seen in the reduction of salaries and the minimum wage, to collective bargaining, to safe and healthy working conditions, and to protections against easy dismissals.
Secondly, poverty rates increased as a result of rising unemployment and cuts to social security benefits. By 2012, 58% of the unemployed were living on incomes below the 2009 poverty line but by 2013 only one in five unemployed received unemployment benefits (Salomon, 2015, p. 526). According to the findings of the 2014 Survey on Income and Living Conditions, in 2013 2.38 million people in Greece (22.1% of the population) were at risk of poverty (Hellenic Statistical Authority, 2015). The poverty threshold amounted to 4,608 Euros per person annually and to 9,677 Euros for households with two adults and two dependent children under 14 years old.
Income poverty is closely related to the denial of social and economic rights. For example, the right to food was severely impacted. In 2016, 47.6% of Greek people below the official poverty threshold reported they could not afford a meal with meat, chicken, fish (or equivalent vegetarian food) every second day (UNHRC, 2016, p. 17). In comparison, only 3.1% of those above the official poverty threshold reported so. The right to housing was also impacted. Greece’s rate of housing cost overburden – the percentage of the population who have to spend more than 40% of their disposable income on housing – rose steeply from 19.1% (2010) to 40.7% (2014) (UNHRC, 2016, p. 17). This rate included 95% of all individuals below the poverty threshold. Over-indebted households could not afford to make mortgage or rent payments or cover their tax debts. A sharp increase in evictions, foreclosures, and home repossessions resulted and the country’s homeless population increased by an estimated 25% from 2009 to 2013 (Salomon, 2015, p. 535). This included new groups of homeless spreading among migrants, young people, women, and families (Lusiani & Saiz, 2013, p. 19).
Thirdly, rights provided through social services such as education and healthcare were breached as public spending was drastically reduced. In regard to education, cuts were made to subsidies, school teachers’ salaries and budgeting for schools. The number of children per classrooms rose while resources decreased and a number of technical and vocational schools were reportedly closed (FIDH, 2014, p. 25). These cuts affect the quality of education provided and can result in early school dropouts with long-term effects (Lusiani & Saiz, 2013, p. 20).
In regard to healthcare, the Troika demanded public spending to not exceed 6% of GDP (Lusiani & Saiz, 2013, p. 20). In comparison the OECD average is 6.7% and is much higher in other European countries such as Germany, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands (FIDH, 2014, p. 22). Healthcare standards declined as hospitals were merged or closed and cuts were made to staff, medication and outpatient pharmaceuticals, hospital beds and equipment, and public health programmes (FIDH, 2014, p. 23; Salomon, 2015, p. 526). Introduction of new fees made healthcare especially inaccessible to the poor. In 2013, 13.9% of persons belonging to the lowest income quintile reported they postponed a necessary medical examination as it would have been “too expensive” (up from 7.8% in 2010) (UNHRC, 2016, p. 18). The fall in expenditure and inaccessibility by the poor resulted in the re-emergence of illnesses not seen in the country for decades such as tuberculosis and locally transmitted malaria (FIDH, 2014, p. 24; Salomon, 2015, p. 535). A rise in depression cases and attempted suicides has also been linked to the economic hardship and cuts in mental health spending (Salomon, 2015, p. 526; FIDH, 2014, p. 24).
V. Accountability for Austerity-Based Human Rights Violations
It is the state’s responsibility to ensure that their laws, policies, and programmes avoid undermining human rights protections (Lusiani & Saiz, 2013, p. 39). The state is liable for any failure to perform such duties. The human distress experienced within Greece led to seven different collective complains by Greek trade unions against the state before the Council of Europe’s European Committee of Social Rights.[3] The complaints concerned measures taken by the Greek government during the severe crisis implementing the Memoranda and especially regarded labour law and the national social security system (Papadopoulos, 2019, p. 88). In these cases Greece was found to have violated labour and social security rights by their austerity measures.
The committee states that an economic crisis should not have as a consequence the reduction of the protection of rights recognized by the European Social Charter (Papadopoulos, 2019, p. 95). Reforms adopted to adjust to the crisis cannot excessively destabilise the domestic labour law system and refuse to provide social protection for the most vulnerable members. The committee asks states to uphold their obligations to meet economic and social human rights when negotiating with international financial institutions (Salomon, 2015, p. 528). Obligations are not to be compromised by the conditions of financial loans.
However, as evident with the situation in Greece, states are often unable to escape the strict policy conditionalities imposed on them by IFIs. States in desperate need for loans hold little bargaining power to negotiate favourable terms. A report by the UNGA (2019, p.5) concludes that loan documents are “closer to a contract of adherence rather than the result of a meeting of the minds through a fully negotiated bilateral agreement”. Although contractual language is avoided and requirements are to be implemented on a voluntary basis, states really have little room to manoeuvre. They are coerced to adhere out of necessity, turning to IFIs as a lender of last resort in the absence of alternative mechanisms to respond to debt crises (UNGA, 2019, p. 6).
Austerity measures commonly feature in the prescribed conditionalities of IFIs’ loans. These prescriptions are shaped by dominant free market ideologies and theories reflecting the neoliberal vision of the economy and society (Stiglitz, 2003, pp. 18, 214-15). Stiglitz (2003, pp. 195-213) explains that the IMF now acts primarily to pursue the interests of the financial markets over its original mission of helping countries in crises and furthering global economic stability. The institution and other IFIs have stayed ideologically fixated despite evidence that the approach actually causes financial instability, macroeconomic catastrophe, and stunted development (Stiglitz, 2003, p. 216; Ramirez, 2011, p. 96).IFIs have continuously ignored the foreseeable and resulting negative human rights impacts of the economic reforms they have prescribed. No arrangements exist to systematically monitor the human rights consequences of prescribed economic policies. As such, IFIs may be considered responsible for complicity of human rights violations in addition to states (Salomon, 2015, pp. 535-540; UNGA, 2019, pp. 14-20). They should be held accountable when imposing policies on states with clear potential human rights impacts.
VI. Conclusion: A Path Forward
Since the severe years of the crisis in Greece the IMF has given several indications that its stance on austerity-based conditionalities may be shifting (Masters & Chatzky, 2019; Chryssogelos, 2018). In 2015, following the election of the Syriza government, the third bailout package began to be negotiated between Greece and the Troika. The IMF distanced itself from the harsher line on debt repayments taken by the European institutions and advocated for more robust debt relief. In a report issued that year, the IMF (2015) reviewed the programmes it had taken during the GFC and concluded that pushing fiscal consolidation too quickly stifled economic activity and reduced the state’s capacity to repay its debt. Accordingly, senior IMF economists argued in 2016 more austerity in Greece would be counterproductive (Obstfield & Thomsen, 2016). And in 2018, the IMF stated support for the Greek government’s planned increases in targeted social support and investment spending, as well as reduction of tax rates (Alderman, 2018).
However, the IMF’s actions elsewhere suggest its approach has not drastically changed. As recently as October 2019, thousands of Ecuadorians led by Indigenous groups protested in the streets against an IMF-imposed austerity package that eliminated fuel subsidies and mandated public sector wage cuts (Salgado, 2019) Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno eventually reached an agreement to maintain fuel subsidies but resistance continues against the larger agreement to implement austerity measures signed with the IMF in February 2019. The government has been cutting spending by eliminating subsidies, severely cutting programs, and reducing government workers, which has caused the economy to fall into a recession, leading to a loss of jobs and increase in poverty (Salgado, 2019).
The Bolivian case is only one of many recent IMF loan programmes with austerity-based conditionalities that violate human rights. A 2018 study found that out of 26 IMF programmes approved in 2016 and 2017, 23 were conditional on fiscal consolidation (Brunswijck, 2018). According to the study “in at least 20 of those countries, people have gone on strike or taken to the streets to protest against government cutbacks, the rising cost of living, tax restructuring and wage bill reforms” (Brunswijck, 2018, p. 3). Ultimately, IMF conditionality has impacted on peoples’ living conditions and affected governments’ abilities to fulfil their human rights obligations.
Given the continued human rights impacts of policies implemented on loan conditionalities, reforms in two major areas are needed to ensure the accountability of the IMF and other IFIs. Firstly, introduce a framework to assess likely short and long-term human rights impacts on the poor and disadvantaged. This would be based on forecasts and results of the conditional economic reforms and measures adopted by States. Darrow (2003, p. 268) suggests adopting criteria to determine when an operation can proceed. This includes considerations of the existence of less harmful alternatives, the duration of the negative human rights impacts, and the opportunity for affected stakeholders to participate in the design and implementation of the project, as well as be compensated if they suffer resulting losses. Assessments of the present and future impacts should accompany each stage of the policy cycle with IFIs ready to implement countervailing measures if necessary to compensate for identified human rights violations (Lusiani & Saiz, 2013, pp. 40-41; Darrow, 2003, p. 269).
Secondly, the IMF and other IFIs could mandate that additional resources be devoted to economic human rights as a condition for their loans (Ramirez, 2011, pp. 729-732). Policies could be promoted that invest in human capital. Given the positive impacts this can have on the economy, it would be more economically justifiable than current conditionalities based on neoliberal dogma. It would also align with the IMF’s fundamental mission of fostering global growth.
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Endnotes
[1] Other terms are also used to refer to this perspective such as “naturalistic,” “orthodox,” “humanist,” or “traditional”.
[2] Other terms are also used to refer to this perspective such as “practical,” institutionalist,” or “functional”.
[3] GENOP-DEI and ADEDY v. Greece, Complaint No. 66/2011; IKA-ETAM v. Greece, Complaint No. 76/2012; POPS v. Greece, Complaint No. 77/2012; I.S.A.P v. Greece, Complaint No 78/2012; POSDEI v. Greece, Complaint No. 79/2012; ATE v. Greece, Complaint No. 80/2012; GSEE v Greece, Complaint No. 111/2014.