HANS KOCHLER, a professor of philosophy at the University of Innsbruck, Austria once wrote , "Economic sanctions have the ethical quality of terror bombings . . . the civilian population is explicitly taken hostage in the framework of a security strategy of power politics".

From an ethical point of view, the political instrumentalisation of human beings is deplorable and should never be considered an attribute in the promotion and furtherance of democracy and freedoms.

It is ignominious for any politician to believe that economic sanctions are a civilised tool to achieve political goals, particularly when such sanctions are targeted at an economy of a developing country such as Zimbabwe.

Those that have agitated for the economic isolation of Zimbabwe beginning in 2001 have the moral shortcomings of terrorist bombers and the philosophy of using human beings as instruments to effect change in games of power politics is as lamentable as that of Al-Qaeda striving to communicate anger against Western political elites by indiscriminately targeting Western civilians.

The anguish brought to Zimbabweans by the economic sanctions pronounced by the European Union, the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Canada has not resonated with the rhetoric that these sanctions are "mere travel bans" or are "targeted at a handful of individuals".

The anguish is explicitly from the public and the wreckage has specifically been on the most vulnerable of the people of Zimbabwe - the aged, children, unemployed, women and low income earners.

Not even one person among those officially listed on the sanctions list has starved, has been unemployed, or has died of cholera. All this has befallen the ordinary civilian, the ordinary villager, the innocent citizen and the ruin is not rocket science at all.

Kochler stands vigorously opposed to the idea of powerful countries using economic sanctions to push people into rebelling against their own governments. People have a dignity that does not allow them to be abused as political tools.

He argues, "People have a natural right not to be sacrificed for a strategic purpose over whose formulation and realisation they exercise no influence."

Among the greatest shortcomings of economic sanctions are issues of effectiveness.

Firstly, the policy goals set for imposing sanctions must be examined. In the case of Zimbabwe the declared goals include what the sanctioning parties have called "restoration of the rule of law", "true democracy for the people of Zimbabwe", "respect for property rights", and "respect for human rights".

These are the indisputable high moral values fronted as the cause for the ruinous sanctions affecting mostly the very poor people of Zimbabwe for whose good we are told the sanctions are in place. Pouring aid to poor Zimbabweans is for the West like an arsonist that burns your house and then turns around to provide tents and blankets to help your children.

It is only very few times that we are told about the "strategic interests" of the Western countries that have hit Zimbabwe with the deadly sanctions. It is during these truthful moments when we are told that Zimbabwe's land reform programme and its economic empowerment policies are "unsound" or that "they pause a continuing and extraordinary threat to the interests of the United States".

The policy goals for the sanctions may be coming in the guise of truistic values as explained above but the reality that is now gaining huge momentum among Africans is that the Western countries want to preserve their economic hegemony over Zimbabweans and they are using the starvation of civilians as a means of economic warfare.

The criterion for measuring success of sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe has been very clear from the West. Nothing short of removing Robert Mugabe and Zanu-PF from power will be considered as success.

After the formation of the inclusive Government in 2009, the US, UK and Australia made it very clear that the presence of President Robert Mugabe and that of Zanu-PF was an anti-climax for their cause. They pronounced stiff reluctance to embrace the new set up.

Stephen Smith, the then foreign minister for Australia bluntly declared, "We want to see the back of Mugabe." This of course was despite what Zimbabweans themselves preferred.

Clearly this would be a political achievement whose essence is solely centred on the Mugabe factor in relation to Western interests in Zimbabwe. But does it address the needs of Zimbabweans?

Such a criterion of measuring success does not speak of goals to develop Zimbabwe, or the will and desire to ensure the wellbeing of the people of Zimbabwe. It is a selfish and narrow approach to international relations and it totally usurps the sovereign right of Zimbabwean people to make priorities of their choice.

The unilateral declaration of sanctions by the EU, the US and other individual Western states did not take into account the effect of such an action on the economic development of Zimbabwe, or perhaps it did, ensuring that such development would be stalled as punishment to Mugabe; so the elites from these Western countries could settle their scores with him, especially in relation to his land reform policy.

The economic sanctions theory maintains that economic pressure on civilians will translate into pressure on the Government for change - the simplistic regime change strategy that has been repeated in many places since 1948. It has worked in some places while it has backfired in others.

However, the targeted leaders who are often expressly intended to be ousted by their outraged peoples, have in many cases managed to continue pursuing their policies and to continue in power.

Sometimes it is simply because the populace can see clearly that their anguish coincides with the introduction of sanctions and this is largely the case with Zimbabweans.

In other instances it is because of the leaders' ability to translate the message of sanctions into punishment and retribution against the country, enhancing popular support based on patriotic and even jingoistic rallying around the flag. This also is largely the case with the Zimbabwean situation and the massive anti-sanctions rally carried out recently could have been an eloquent expression of that.

Traditionally sanctions have unintentionally contributed to the emergence of parallel or black markets, creating huge opportunities for elites and their collaborators. Sanctions fuel the rich-gets-richer scenario and they are more of an opportunity for ruling elites than they are a form of punishment for the same. Sanctions only punish the poor and the vulnerable.

In Zimbabwe, there are people who amassed so much wealth in 2008 when the majority of the people were going through the worst time ever to be experienced in the known history of the nation. For such a fulgurous jump to riches these people have economic sanctions to thank for their once a lifetime fortune.

If at all the travel ban list is not a smokescreen to hoodwink the gullible, then one will be justified to say the economic sanctions imposed by the West on Zimbabwe are hitting the wrong target, the population at large, particularly the weakest in society. From the ethical shortcomings of economic sanctions it is important to look at the illegality of unilateral sanctions, a very hot topic that has created so many enemies for this writer, especially from the West.

Gustavo Capdevila of the InterPress Service reported on 9 April 1998 that the 53 member Human Rights Commission had voted against unilateral coercive measures imposed on the other countries by powerful states from the industrialised world, and examples included Cuba, Libya and Iran.

The Commission condemned the Helms-Burton Act which stiffened the blockade on Cuba and the D'Amato Law which blocked trade with Libya and Iran. These are the equivalent of the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act (ZDERA), which blocks trade with Zimbabwean companies and the Syria Accountability Act, which prohibits trade with Damascus.

The Commission voted 37 in favour, 7 against and 8 abstentions. The communiqué released after the vote said the Commission "urges states not to adopt unilateral measures that run counter to international law or the UN Charter".

The economic sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe may be popular with the MDC-T but to argue that they are compatible with international law or that they do not run counter to the UN Charter is just frivolous.

The resolution criticised the extraterritorial effects of unilateral sanctions, especially the Helms-Burton Law, which provides for legal proceedings against citizens from third party countries who do business with Cuba.

It is not too different from the listing of non-Zimbabwean citizens on Zimbabwe's sanctions list, presumably on accusations of "propping up the Mugabe regime".

The HRC rejected the employment of unilateral economic sanctions as measures of political or economic pressure "against any nation", especially developing nations "due to the sanctions' negative effect on broad sectors of the population".

Colombian Ambassador Gustova Castro spoke on behalf of the Commission and pointed out that moral authorities like the late Pope John Paul 11 "reprove that practice due to the suffering it causes the civilian population".

He continued and argued that no country can argue "supposed national interests as a pretext for violating the sovereignty of other states".

In reply US Ambassador Nancy Rubin said nations had the right to decide which countries, and under what conditions, they would do business with. By this logic, the latest move by Zimbabwe to target certain companies from specified countries for counter sanctions against the same specified countries must be quite plausible for the United States; regardless the US itself is one of the three targeted countries.

Zimbabwe has every right to decide which countries, and under what conditions, they would do business with. Such a decision must not be disputed, if we go by the reasoning of Nancy Rubin.

It is quite revealing to note that the seven countries that voted against the resolution were Canada, Germany, Britain, Japan, Luxembourg, South Korea and the US; all part to the current hostile contingent that persecutes Zimbabwe through sanctions, perhaps with the exception of Japan.

In 1974 the UN General Assembly's Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of the State declared; "No State may use or encourage the use of economic, political and any other type of measures to coerce another state in order to obtain from it the subordination of the exercise of its sovereign rights or to secure from it advantages of any kind".

Is this not what the West aims to achieve in Zimbabwe? Do they not seek to reverse the land reform programme and to re-assert their economic hegemony over the resources of Zimbabwe? Do they not seek to use the sanctions to establish a more submissive regime that will be pliant to their own dictates?

Susan Page even believes that Zanu-PF can be converted to this type of a regime, if MDC-T continues to disappoint the way they are doing.

She intimated this quite clearly when she visited Zimbabwe recently.

If Zanu-PF capitulated and became an ally of imperialists, the people's revolution will have to do without the liberation party, in fact with it as an enemy of the people.

Protocol 1 Additional to the Geneva Convention 1997, Part IV, Section 1, Chapter III, Article 54 says;

1. Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is prohibited.

2. It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove, or render useless objects indisputable to the agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies, and irrigation works, for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance value to the civilian population or to the adverse Party, whatever the motive, whether in order to starve out civilians, or cause them to move away, or for any other motive.

The essence here is that economic sanctions targeted at depriving people of food and other essentials are illegal and prohibited by international law.

MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai has been publicly recorded exalting the devastating effe-cts of sanctions and urging people to move away from Zanu-PF and to rise against the party so as to end the deadly effect of sanctions.

At Mucheke Stadium in Masvingo in 2008 he said, "Are you hungry? Are you suffering?"

After the people gave him a raucous "Yes!" Morgan Tsvangirai said, "Then remove this regime".
He went on to promise the crowd US$10 billion which he said "was ready and waiting" from the West if only the people could remove Mugabe's Government.

UN General Assembly Resolution 44/125, De-cember 22, 1989 declared that all States "should refrain from threatening or applying trade and financial restrictions, blockades, embargoes, and other economic sanctions, incompatible with the charter of the United Nations and in violation of the undertakings contracted multilaterally and bilaterally against developing countries as a form of political and economic coercion that affects their political economic social development."

This clearly shows that unilateral imposition of sanctions on Zimbabwe is indeed incompatible with the charter of the United Nations and is a violation of multilateral and bilateral treaties already in existence between Zimbabwe and the involved Western countries. This is why it is important for Zimbabweans to always remember that the ruinous sanctions affecting their lives are in fact in violation of international law.

The UN General Assembly of 1997 simply declared, "Starvation of civilians is unlawful."

There is no simpler way to explain the economic strangulation of Zimbabwe by Western countries. It is simply unlawful.

Some scholars have argued that economic sanctions in general are unlawful because they violate Article 2(3) of the UN Charter which requires States to settle their international disputes by peaceful means.

The other argument is that economic sanctions violate Article 2(4) of the UN Charter which requires states to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity and political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.

The ethical shortcomings of economic sanctions in general and the illegality of unilateral economic sanctions in particular are so convincing in themselves that it is time the whole philosophy of using economic sanctions to achieve political goals is revisited and revised even by the UN itself.

For Zimbabwe it is time to speak with one voice and say NO to ruinous unilateral and unlawful economic sanctions. If the MDC's ineptitude is such that they can only survive on the leverage provided by Western sanctions then the party has no business in the politics of Zimbabwe and Africa needs no such parties.

We cannot have politicians who believe they can starve people all the way to the polling booth so they can vote for them for fear of starving to death. An election under such conditions cannot in any way be free and fair.

Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!

Reason Wafawarova is a political writer and can be contacted on reason@rwafawarova.com or wafawarova@yahoo.co.uk or visit www.rwafa warova.com
 

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