To be released tomorrow. Here's a news report that's got a sneak preview of the issues:
The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
Democracies are backsliding, UN finds Barbara Crossette The New York Times Wednesday, July 24, 2002
New freedoms and better quality of life are said to be threatened
UNITED NATIONS, New York After more than a decade of celebrating the births of dozens of new democracies, the United Nations warns this week that democratic gains risk being reversed in many countries as authoritarian leaders manipulate elections and millions lose faith in democratic systems.
In dozens of nations, a democratic culture that allows room for political opposition, a free press and robust citizens' action groups is failing to develop or is being stifled, a report to be released Wednesday concludes. The study, "Human Development Report 2002: Deepening Democracy in a Fragmented World," also found that economic slowdowns in many countries add to a popular perception that democracies cannot improve living conditions.
"Since 1980, 81 countries have moved into the democratic column, and indeed some 33 military governments have been replaced by civilian governments," said Mark Malloch Brown, administrator of the United Nations Development Program, which published the report. In comments to reporters last week, he added that 140 of about 200 countries have held multiparty elections.
"The concern is that one multiparty election does not a democracy make," he said. "The international cheerleaders for democracy have underestimated what it takes to build a functioning, properly rooted democracy."
The United Nations Development Program's annual Human Development Report was created in 1990 to measure the progress of nations not in dry economic statistics but in the lives of ordinary citizens. Over the objections of some governments, in rich as well as poor countries, the report has become increasingly pointed in its criticisms of political chicanery, corruption and human rights abuses. The critical trend has been encouraged under Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
The report ranks countries by quality of life, based largely on life expectancy, education and personal incomes. This year Norway ranks first, as it did last year, followed by Sweden, Canada, Belgium, Australia and the United States. The countries at the bottom of the index are all in sub-Saharan Africa: Sierra Leone, where life expectancy stands at barely 39 years, is worst, followed by Niger, Burundi, Mozambique and Burkina Faso. The report is scheduled to be posted online at www.undp.org.
The report concluded that although a majority of the world's people live in at least nominal democracies, in 106 countries political freedoms and civil rights are limited, and civil wars within countries since 1990 have cost 3.6 million lives. About 2.8 billion of the world's 6 billion people live on less than $2 a day. More than 60 countries have lower per capita incomes now than they did in 1990.
"Democracy doesn't seem to be responding to the real agenda of the world's poor," Malloch Brown said. The report says that money politics serving special interest groups is of concern to voters in democracies as divergent as the United States, where corporate contributions rose to $1.2 billion in the 2000 election, and India, where 80 percent of funds for major political parties in a 1996 election came from large corporations.
Voter turnout seems to be declining everywhere, the report found. Polls often show a dwindling confidence in democracy and the free market, most recently in Latin America, the report said. The failure of rich nations to expand free trade rapidly enough to make a difference to struggling economies is a factor in this, United Nations officials say.
Sometimes, the report found, new democratic hopes unmet by elected governments lead to public disgust for the system and regression to military rule. Experts often cite Pakistan, where corrupt and inefficient elected governments in the 1990s were exposed and hammered by a free press. So there was little public opposition when General Pervez Musharraf seized power in 1999.
More recently in Zimbabwe, a suspect election has contributed to a precipitous economic slide and laid the ground for political strife.
Looking around the world, the report found banks, courts and government institutions under strain, often because of corruption or political pressures. It found electoral processes subverted by fraud as well as heavy-handed politics.
Perhaps sensing their vulnerability, many governments are asking the United Nations Development Program for more help in handling law and order.
The organization, which is involved in training police officers in Afghanistan, Mozambique and Haiti, will spend 60 percent of its aid budget this year on what is generally called "governance" - the proper functioning of democratic institutions, including Parliaments. Only a few decades ago, the bulk of the money went to more traditional development projects like drilling wells or aiding local public services.