By Lorena Rodriguez
“Imagine… a 10 year old child forced to carry 70 pounds of rubber using a stick and two pails several times a day. Because of these harsh conditions, the children cannot fully grow up physically and mentally. They are being used as beasts of burden.”
- From speech by Alfred Brownell, LL.M., President of Green Advocates,
Monrovia, Liberia, 24 January 2007
Liberia, beautifully named “country of the free” after it was founded in 1820 by free African-Americans and freed slaves from the United States, has become a tale of two stories: one of hope after two decades of abusive regimes and a devastating civil war, and one of struggle for economic and social justice under what many have described as a case of “modern-day slavery.”
The story of hope comes under the leadership of Liberia’s first democratically elected female President, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, who has made promises of peace and social and economic stability to a country crippled by decades of conflict and overburdened by an illegitimate debt accumulated throughout the course of two corrupt dictatorships.
Next week, on February 13 and 14 President Johnson-Sirleaf will meet in Washington at a donors conference co-hosted by the World Bank, the United Nations, the U.S. government and the European Commission. During this conference, the future of Liberia and the prospects for the country to overcome the destruction that dictatorships and civil wars have left will be decided.
Almost 8,000 people throughout the country joined the national call to ask U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to “Have a Heart for Liberia.” Aware of the enormous burden that over $3.5 billion in debt constitutes for the country, there is a widespread request for donors to cancel Liberia’s debt. In a country where 85% of the population remains unemployed and over 75% of the population lives with less than $1 a day, such burden constitutes a major challenge for its development.
The International Monetary Fund itself has recognized that Liberia’s debt constitutes a major obstacle to development in the country. However, as of today, donors are imposing a condition of $1.5 billion as the payment of accumulated interest for Liberia. This is a condition to which poor countries need to comply in order to qualify for debt relief or cancellation, required by the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative, a creation of the World Bank and the IMF (designed to obtain as much as possible from debt repayments from poor countries).
Not only is Liberia unable to pay the interests that it has been accumulating if it is to develop and provide the basic services its people need (like health care, education, electricy, and other basic rights) but the country should not pay it given the long-standing irresponsibility of the creditor countries themselves.
Both the United States and the international community have a moral responsibility towards Liberia, given that much of Liberia's debt was accumulated during the regimes of U.S.-backed dictator Samuel Doe, as well as Charles Taylor between 1980 and 2003. During the Cold War, President Reagan provided Doe with financial support despite his dubious democratic rule and despite clear evidence of human rights violations. Such irresponsibility places rich nations, and especially the United States, in a position of power to determine Liberia’s future, given that almost a third of the country’s debt is claimed by the U.S. Treasury.
Liberia cannot and should not pay back neither its debt to donor countries, nor the interests accumulated over the years, for two major reasons. First of all, it is estimated that at the current payment rate, it would take Liberia over a thousand years to “qualify” for debt relief if it is to pay interests that equal 8 times its GDP. And second of all, Liberia qualifies for the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative, which makes sure that no poor country faces an unsustainable debt burden that it cannot manage through traditional debt-relief methods.
Sadly, were donor countries and creditor institutions to provide debt relief to Liberia, it would not be enough for the transition to a peaceful, democratic, as well as socially and economically stable Liberia if economic injustice persists. According to the conference agenda, economic and social development challenges are to be met by “enabling environment for private sector development”. However, it was this same free environment for foreign investment that trapped many Liberian workers into a cycle of modern-day slavery since Firestone Natural Rubber Company Liberia arrived to “invest” in the country 80 years ago.
The US subsidiary of the Japanese multinational Bridgestone/Firestone has been criticized throughout the world for having created a vicious cycle in Liberia where generation after generation of over-worked employees require their children to help them meet their abusive daily quotas. Criticism of Firestone also targets the multinational’s environmental damage through the use of harmful chemicals and discharges of enormous amount of waste into rivers, with implications on the health of the same communities of those workers who Firestone claims to protect.
Recently, Dan Adomitis, president of the Firestone Natural Rubber Company Liberia, attempted to clean the company’s name by denying all accusations that point at his company for employing children under 18 years of age, citing his strict policies against child labor. In addition, he emphasized Firestone’s incomparable leadership role in preventing child labor, as he claimed that no other private employer in Liberia is doing more to prevent it. While it is true that Firestone provides free schooling for more than 12,00 students, one can only wonder how workers can possibly manage to meet a quota that requires them to tap rubber trees during 21 hours in one day! How can they not require their children’s help at work when their wages are cut in half otherwise? And, again, how can they have the luxury of earning a livable wage elsewhere in a country where 85% of the population is unemployed?!
Sadly, there is some irony behind the country’s very name. How can Liberia remain to be a “country of the free” when its future economic and social development is chained to an illegitimate debt and when it is dependent on the decision of powerful countries over whether it qualifies for debt relief? How can Liberia remain being a “country of the free” when it will not be allowed to effectively object to whatever policy recommendations are made during the Liberia Partners’ Forum next week? How can Liberia remain being a “country of the free” when Liberians are confronted with a choiceless choice?
In the field of international development, it is often argued that child labor is a necessary evil in order to climb up the ladder of development. But would it not be more just to give Liberia a chance of climbing such “ladder of development” by addressing both its debt and its historical eighty years of exploitation?
These past two weeks the Amnesty International club at The College of St. Scholastica launched its first campaign on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ESCR) to cooperate with other grassroots organizations from Washington, D.C. in a national effort to cancel Liberia’s debt and to bring awareness on the persistence of what has been described as a case of “modern slavery” in Liberia.
Among other issues, Amnesty International works on Corporate Accountability around the world, condemning profit-driven companies that undermine environmental protection and labor laws, which ultimately constitutes a violation of people’s economic, social and cultural rights. Bridgestone/Firestone corporation faces today a legal case filed by the International Labor Rights Fund. In addition, on January 24 it won the “Public Eye Award” for the “Worst Corporation in the World, which is given to “the most irresponsible multinational corporations and is held opposite the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.”