{"id":211,"date":"2010-07-03T08:09:37","date_gmt":"2010-07-03T12:09:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/174.120.63.226\/~hrlha\/?p=211"},"modified":"2010-07-03T08:09:37","modified_gmt":"2010-07-03T12:09:37","slug":"africa-failing-democracies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.humanrightsleague.org\/?p=211","title":{"rendered":"Africa Failing Democracies"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>When human rights Watch criticized the results of Ethiopia\u2019s May elections, in which the ruling coalition \u201cwon\u201d an improbable 545 out of 547 seats, leaders in Addis Ababa didn\u2019t ignore the influential NGO. Instead, they paid tens of thousands of demonstrators to gather in the capital and denounce the report.<\/p>\n

Ethiopia\u2019s political shenanigans are emblematic of a growing trend away from democracy in Africa. The swing includes not only pariah states like Eritrea and Sudan, but also U.S. allies like Rwanda, where President Paul Kagame is up for reelection and seems set to duplicate the improbable 95\u00a0percent victory he posted seven years ago. Rights groups have already cried foul: a general who criticized Kagame was shot, charges have been brought against a top opposition leader, and a dissident journalist was killed. In Gabon and Togo, the deaths of long-serving autocrats have meant elections in which power was smoothly -transferred\u2014to their sons, that is. Mauritania, Guinea, Madagascar, and Niger have all suffered coups in the past two years. Freedom House, a nonprofit that tracks democratic trends, dropped three African countries from its list of \u201celectoral democracies\u201d last year, and reported declines in political freedom in 10 others. The Mo Ibrahim Foundation\u2014which offers a lucrative prize to African leaders who both help their countries and peacefully leave office\u2014decided not to offer an award last year.<\/p>\n

Why the backsliding? It\u2019s partly thanks to the rise of China, which provides cheap loans and investment to resource-rich countries while asking no hard questions about human rights, thus strengthening the hold of authoritarian governments. The West is to blame, too. The Obama administration and its European allies have turned a blind eye to autocratic trends in -places like Uganda, Burundi, and Ethiopia because of those countries\u2019 role in -battling Islamists<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no easy solution. Making aid conditional on meeting democratic or human-rights standards would mean a halt to programs that help the poor. Criticizing military allies risks disrupting the war against radical Islamists. But as long as Western countries stay the course, more Africans will grow skeptical of the West\u2019s declared support for the rule of law. \u201cIf this is their representation of democracy and human rights, they shouldn\u2019t talk about it anymore,\u201d says Hailu Shawel, an Ethiopian opposition leader. \u201cThey should shut up.\u201d The Obama administration and its allies could win back credibility by taking a tougher line on Kagame and his fellow leaders\u2014but they seem more likely to keep looking away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When human rights Watch criticized the results of Ethiopia\u2019s May elections, in which the ruling coalition \u201cwon\u201d an improbable 545 out of 547 seats, leaders in Addis Ababa didn\u2019t ignore the influential NGO. Instead, they paid tens of thousands of demonstrators to gather in the capital and denounce the report….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-press-releases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.humanrightsleague.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.humanrightsleague.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.humanrightsleague.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.humanrightsleague.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.humanrightsleague.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.humanrightsleague.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.humanrightsleague.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.humanrightsleague.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.humanrightsleague.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}