Saturday 13 June 2015
at the Symposium on Challenges facing Liberalism
(held in Zurich).
I begin this talk with the question Sir Graham Watson asked: “What are the roots of liberal thought and how do we apply them to the circumstances we face today?” I will specifically apply this crucial question to the challenge of migration.
To begin with the roots of liberal thought. We all agree that it starts with the primacy of the individual — an insight that emerged in the signing of the Magna Carta, 800 years ago and evolved over centuries, into the liberal understanding of the role of the state to protect the rights and freedoms of each individual; and the notion of accountability of political leadership to the people they govern.
The Democratic Alliance (the major opposition party in South Africa) describes the culmination of the liberal ideal as a context in which each person has the freedom and opportunities they can use, to live a life they value. This requires a framework of constitutionalism, with entrenched fundamental rights, the rule of law, due process, and equality before the law. It requires a capable state, the separation of powers, an open market economy, and individuals who understand that responsible citizenship is the corollary of personal freedom. It also requires individuals who approach issues with an understanding of what Karl Popper described as “falsifiability”. This means being open to evidence and argument that contradict one’s own position. Open-minded, tolerant people are essential for an open society to thrive.
In the Democratic Alliance we describe this ideal as the “Open, Opportunity Society for all”. We define our core values in three words: Freedom, Fairness and Opportunity. Our challenge is to apply them to the society in which we live today.
My next point picks up what Hon Doris Fiala (MP) said in her excellent speech. She stressed that all the major risks and challenges the world faces today are global, and they cannot be solved by countries acting individually, within their own national boundaries.
Ms Fiala referred to challenges like fundamentalism, terrorism, climate change, the global financial crisis, and the challenge of mass migration, which includes (but is not limited to) asylum seekers and refugees.
If most of the world’s challenges are now global, we have no alternative but to seek global solutions. And this requires a fundamental shift in the way most developed democracies think about the world. If liberals (with our emphasis on the primacy of each individual) do not lead the search for global solutions, who will?
I am always struck, when I am in Europe, by the extent to which European liberals tend to approach global challenges through the prism of ethnic nationalism. They assume that individuals should be able to exercise their full rights and freedoms within the confines of a national entity (the nation state to which they “belong”), but not necessarily beyond its borders. This is accepted as a “given”, in the same way that people accept laws of nature, like gravity.
It is one of the key responsibilities of an organization that calls itself Liberal International to interrogate this assumption much more deeply. How do we make progress towards a world in which each individual has the freedoms and opportunities they can use to live a life they value, wherever they happen to have been born?
It is tragic to face the fact that, in 2015, we are moving further away from this ideal, measured by the exploding numbers of people fleeing their countries and seeking sanctuary elsewhere.
According to data recently released by the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the number of people displaced during 2014 grew to 59,5 million compared with 51,2-million the previous year. The figures contained in the UNHCR’s report on “Global Trends: World at War”, suggests that one in every 122 humans is now either a refugee, internally displaced, or seeking asylum.
The UNHCR has described this as an “age of unprecedented mass displacement” and called for “an unprecedented humanitarian response and a renewed global commitment to tolerance and protection for people fleeing conflict and persecution”. But, apart from such clarion calls, the UNHCR has not tabled a coherent plan. Ad hoc responses, dealing with specific crises, as refugees land on the shores or are dumped on the borders of various European countries, generate anguished debate, but little by way of a co-ordinted response.
As liberals, we believe that this crisis must be tackled by going to the root causes of the problem, not merely addressing the symptoms. This involves looking beyond the “pull” factors that draw people towards open, free societies in which they aspire to live; it involves identifying and addressing the “push factors” that constrain people’s opportunities and deny their freedom under corrupt, authoritarian or fundamentalist regimes worldwide.
Offering refuge to those seeking sanctuary is a necessary but insufficient response. Blaming, arresting and prosecuting the “human traffickers” who exploit the people’s misery will also not resolve matters for those desperate enough to pay all they have to escape their circumstances. The debate needs to focus much more on what the international community can (or should) do to curtail the human rights abuses of authoritarian regimes, and extend freedom and opportunity to people, wherever they happen to live, so that they can make real choices about their lives.
People who wish to escape their circumstances and seek better opportunities fall into various categories in terms of international law. Some can be defined as genuine refugees in terms of the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol on the “Rights of Refugees and Responsibilities and Duties of Receiving Countries”. However, many do not meet the criteria to “qualify” as refugees according to the UN definition (which requires a direct threat to personal safety and physical freedom on political/ethnic or religious grounds). Millions of people who do not face these threats nevertheless seek greater degrees of freedom or better economic opportunities.
Those with scarce skills are in demand world-wide and can often settle in their country of choice. But the majority who seek better opportunities are not highly skilled. For them, the “asylum seekers” route is often the best available option to begin a new life, even if their circumstances do not meet the criteria for being granted political asylum.
The distinction between refugees, asylum seekers and economic migrants is becoming increasingly blurred, posing a major political and moral dilemma for liberals, especially in the “developed” world. For decades the world’s poorest countries have carried the biggest burden of people fleeing oppressive or authoritarian regimes in their search for freedom and opportunity.
As the New York Times said recently: “the overwhelming majority, 86 percent [of displaced people], live in developing countries, which are least able to support them. Unfortunately, it is only when the human tide overflows its Third World boundaries that the rich nations begin a panicky search for remedies”.
This “panicky search” has been reflected in the European and international media recently. The BBC reported that 100,000 migrants have arrived in Southern Europe from North Africa this year alone, sometimes up to 1000 per day. And the only proposed “solution” thus far has been to try to prevent “human traffickers” leaving the shores of North Africa with their human cargo; or rescue hapless people from drowning in the Mediterranean, and allocating them in “quotas” to various European countries to “spread the burden”. The greatest crisis of all is the challenge of young children, unaccompanied by any adult known to them.
Many Europeans have responded in illiberal ways, reflected in the growth of rightwing nationalist parties. This demonstrates how easily people default to ethnic nationalism, even in countries that have championed the ideals of individual rights and freedoms for centuries.
These critics of the liberal position on asylum seekers and economic migrants ask some tough questions for which there are no easy answers. How, for example will open societies survive the influx of growing numbers of people who seek the benefits of economic opportunities, but who also seek to exercise (and extend or even impose) political, cultural and religious practices that are often highly illiberal and can, over time, pose a threat fundamental freedoms?
Another challenging question with which liberals have failed to engage sufficiently is: How can the international community, and individual countries, protect and preserve languages, cultures, religious practices and customs — while avoiding the descent into nationalist political mobilisation?
And outside Europe the questions are even more fundamental: How do countries, like South Africa, with soaring unemployment rates, take a “liberal approach” to asylum seekers, who are increasingly regarded as an “economic threat” by many South African citizens.
Ironically, it is the world’s developing countries (that face far greater challenges) that have responded to migrants and asylum seekers in ways that are more compatible with liberalism than much of Europe and the United States.
In most European countries, for example, migrants and asylum seekers are kept in camps, without the right to work, where their opportunities for a better life remain as elusive as they were in the countries from which they fled.
In contrast, asylum seekers in South Africa have an easier transition. In terms of the SA Refugees Act of 1998, as soon as a foreign national arrives in South Africa (whether by legal or illegal means) they can fill in a form at a Refugee Reception Office to register as an asylum seeker. They are then allocated an asylum seeker’s number which enables them to exercise almost all the rights and freedoms enjoyed by South Africans — particularly freedom of movement and freedom to work, and the freedom to access public facilities (like hospitals and schools). However, asylum seekers do not have the right to vote, to start a political party or to qualify for social grants.
Although South Africa’s approach is much closer to the liberal ideal than many other countries, it has also had unintended consequences that are proving increasingly difficult for a developing country to manage. As the saying goes: In theory, theory is supposed to work in practice, but in practice it doesn’t.
The first conundrum South Africa faces is a threat to the very foundation of a constitutional state: it is now easier to enter our country by illegal than legal means. When a constitutional state creates conditions that make it easier for people to achieve their objectives by breaking the law rather than abiding by it, the rule of law itself is put at risk. This is arguably the greatest threat to the liberal ideal.
Legal immigration to South Africa (even for skilled people) is severely constrained in terms of the Immigration Act, whereas registered asylum seekers secure immediate rights to be in South Africa, seek work and move around freely.
The contradictions within South Africa’s present system have inevitably opened the door for corrupt practices — such as the forging of identity documents which enable migrants to register for social grants, and the illegal sale of state subsidized houses to foreign nationals. The result of this “open door policy” for asylum seekers (relatively speaking) has been an enormous wave of people from across sub-Saharan Africa, who classify themselves as asylum seekers, coming to South Africa. Estimates of their number range between 3 million to 7 million people. It is impossible to provide a precise figure because the numbers have overwhelmed the system’s capacity to cope. As a result many people (for example those whose “refugee” status is rejected) simply remain in South Africa (or return illegally), living and working “below the radar” of the official system.
By far the majority of migrants, however, seek official asylum status. Once they have registered, it can take more than a decade before their case for full “refugee status” is heard by the Refugee Status Determination Office. 90% of applications are turned down, which demonstrates the extent to which the asylum seeker system is used by people who cannot, by law, meet the internationally-defined criteria to be classified as refugees.
If the application is refused, the asylum seeker may appeal, which sets in motion a process that, typically, also takes many years. By the time a final determination is made, the asylum seeker has usually integrated fully into South African society, with few remaining roots in their country of origin.
This logjam could be significantly relieved if South Africa were to liberalise immigration laws, and make it much easier for people with skills (broadly defined) to enter our country easily via the legal route, and acquire the right to work without having to use the “asylum seekers” route. South Africa, with its skills deficit, needs all the skills it can get. Skilled migrants are, typically, entrepreneurial and hard-working. Many start new businesses and create jobs. One of the significant findings of research conducted by the liberal policy think-tank, Centre for Development and Enterprise, and conducted in Johannesburg (Gauteng) and Witbank (Mpumalanga), is that asylum seekers are far less likely to be unemployed than South Africans. And employers in several economic sectors, from tourism to security and agriculture, tend to prefer appointing asylum seekers with skills, than unemployed, unskilled South Africans.
This is a contributing factor to the periodic eruption of xenophobic violence in South Africa. Xenophobia is based (in part) on the perception that foreigners are depriving citizens of jobs. In such circumstances it is instructive and encouraging to note that no significant political party in South Africa seeks to exploit xenophobic populism.
Europeans judge the outbreaks of xenophobic violence in South Africa very harshly. While this is understandable and justifiable, I often wonder how Europeans would react in comparable circumstances — which they strenuously avoid through a much more illiberal regime with respect to asylum seekers. The emergence of populist rightwing parties that exploit xenophobic fears across Europe, constitutes a significant threat to liberal ideals — as do the growing number of intolerant, fundamentalist and nationalist regimes worldwide.
For Liberal International, this only heightens the urgency of seeking liberal solutions to the phenomenon of a shrinking world as the pace of globalization increases; the growing quest for freedom vs the rise of authoritarian fundamentalism; and the need for global solutions that expand (rather than diminish) human rights.
This situation should galvanise institutions such as the United Nations and the African Union to take the lead in seeking solutions. The UNHCR’s most recent report, that reflects the escalation of the crisis, offers little by way of practical, implementable solutions.
While it is necessary to promote a liberal response to the plight of desperate migrants, it is even more crucial to address the threat of authoritarian dictatorships, (whether religious, secular or nationalist), that are emerging across the world. Despite some brave efforts (for example by the International Criminal Court in seeking to arrest and prosecute human rights abusers and mass murderers wherever they are), attempts to curb dictatorships have generally been unsuccessful. International co-operation to seek freedom and opportunity for all, is usually thwarted (once again) by the power of ethnic nationalism.
And it is here that the contradictions of South Africa’s policies come full circle. While the South African government laments the growing challenge of escalating numbers of asylum seekers in the country, they do nothing to deal with the “push factors” that force migrants to leave their homes and seek opportunities elsewhere.
This was dramatically illustrated recently by the extent to which the South African government went to shield Sudan’s war criminal leader, Omar Al-Bashir, from arrest, despite the arrest warrant issued against Bashir by the International Criminal Court, and despite the fact that the South African High Court had ordered his arrest. Evidence is mounting that the highest echelons of government in South Africa assisted in enabling Al-Bashir to escape, with a security escort, from a military airbase.
Al-Bashir has been held responsible for the deaths of some 300,000 people in Darfur and the displacement of 2,5-million people from their homes, who fully qualify with the international definition of “refugees” because their lives and freedom are directly at risk.
Yet, instead of assisting the international effort to deal with such dictators (which include several others such as Robert Mugabe, President of Zimbabwe, and also currently of the African Union), the South African government actively shields them from international accountability. In such circumstances it is disingenuous to demand that international bodies take action, when countries (like South Africa) that are signatories to the International Conventions that enable such action are ignored or actively undermined.
The African Union was also clearly complicit in seeking to guarantee free passage for Al-Bashir in South Africa, which is just one example of the AU’s dismal failure to address the circumstances that displace millions of people in Africa every year. If Africa demands (correctly) that the human rights of Africans be respected, the AU should be leading by example, and opposing dictators and oppressors across the continent.
The prospects of this happening do not look promising. It is too easy for tyrants to prop each other up, and “default” to racial nationalism to protect their own interests under the guise of “national sovereignty”.
This is a major challenge for liberals worldwide. Attempts to hold international leaders accountable against the yardstick of international standards (such as the International Declaration of Human Rights) have met with little success.
Accountability of leaders is the hallmark of functional liberalism, whether in an individual country, or the international community. The next step for liberals is to engage internationally with each other, through existing institutions, to develop effective mechanisms of accountability that have real and painful consequences for leaders and governments that flout the basic human rights of their citizens.
The US-led “War on Terror” (which is often counter-productive) cannot be the only way. We must make our international institutions work. And the best place to start is in Africa, the continent generating such a high percentage of the world’s refugees and asylum seekers. There could be no more important role for the Africa Liberal Network, together with Liberal International, to seek to fulfil this role.
