Nicaragua eight
years on - Revolution and the Right to
Development
Tortilla con Sal
Enviado
por tortilla en Sáb, 10/01/2015 - 21:40
Tortilla
con Sal, January 10th 2015
The UN Declaration on
the Right to Development was approved by 146 votes in 1986 with only the United
States voting against. That same year, the International Court of Justice
condemned the US government for its terrorist aggression against Nicaragua. Although,
now, the hope that international law and its institutions might be a force for
progress looks ridiculously forlorn, back then it still seemed a reasonable
prospect. But, since 1986, Western governments have acted deliberately to
manipulate and undermine international law and institutions so as to defend
their steadily declining global power and privilege.
The Right to Development
and the West
Reading the Right to Development Declaration now, the contrast with what has happened over the last twenty five
years is sharp and sobering. The Declaration reaffirms the right of peoples to
self-determination and full sovereignty over their natural wealth and
resources. It posits the right and duty of States to formulate development
policies aimed at the constant improvement of the well-being of the entire
population based on their active, free and meaningful participation and on an
equitable and fair distribution of resources.
The Declaration requires
countries to provide effective international co-operation helping developing
countries to foster their comprehensive development while also insisting that
all States protect their peoples against illegitimate foreign interference and
threats of war. The Declaration affirms that civil, political, economic, social
and cultural rights are indivisible and interdependent and recommends popular
participation in all spheres as important both for economic and social
development and for the full realization of human rights. It also urges all
States to promote international peace and security.
For people in most of
North America and Europe, the Right to Development is litle more than a vain
and fast-receding mirage. In their own countries, they suffer sharpening deprivation
of social and economic rights resulting from economic policies deliberately
designed to promote inequality. Overseas, their governments base foreign policy
on crude intervention in other countries' internal affairs and vicious
militarist aggression. Western societies are marked by increasing racism and
the manipulation of fears over terrorism to justify repressive restrictions of
civil and political rights. That terrorism has been and continues to be
promoted and supported by the same Western governments who claim to be fighting
it. Western governments, dominated by corporate elites, can legitimately be
accused of deliberately fomenting global instability and domestic inequality
against the best interests of their own peoples
Nicaragua and its Sandinista
government
On January 10th 2007,
the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional entered government in Nicaragua
for the first time since losing the elections of 1990. The peaceful transfer of
power to a right wing government in 1990 was made possible by the commitment of
then outgoing President Daniel Ortega to democratic legitimacy. Now, in 2014,
the combined opposition forces of the main right-wing political parties and
their completely marginalized phoney Left allies, who won the 1990 elections backed
by the US government's terrorist menace of unending military aggression, can
barely even muster 10% electoral support nationally. The Frente Sandinista has
a large majority in the National Assembly, while President Ortega and Rosario
Murillo, effectively his Prime Minister, enjoy unprecedented popularity.
It is easy to list the
social and economic achievements of President Ortega's governments since 2007.
Persistently above average economic growth in an overwhelmingly adverse
regional and international context has increased Nicaragua's gross domestic
product at annual rates well above those of its neighbours. But it is the
categorical emphasis in the redistribution of that wealth that sets Nicaragua
apart and explains the prolific and very public declarations of support from
multilateral organizations like UNESCO, the UN Food and Agriculture
Organization and the Panamerican Health Organization, among many, many others.
In fundamental material
terms, since January 2007, Nicaragua has made dramatic progress in terms of
road, port and airport infrastructure. It has completely reversed previous
failed neoliberal energy policies in favour of energy generated from renewable
resources. Health and education services, previously undergoing creeping
privatization have been reversed in favour of guaranteeing universal free
access. The government's focus has consistently been on poverty reduction and
empowerment of previously marginalized families and people.
Impoverished families
have benefited hugely from government programmes improving housing and
community infrastructure, providing microcredit to urban women-led
micro-businesses, devoting productive resources to rural families or
guaranteeing affordable public transport and electricity. Above all the main beneficiaries
have been women in Nicaragua who have been empowered and affirmed at every
level. Nicaragua is realizing the Frente Sandinista's historic
revolutionary programme thanks to President Ortega's deep, acute strategic
vision, to the practical example and drive of Rosario Murillo and to the moral
commitment of innumerable colleagues at every level of national and local
government.
Regional significance
These and many other
achievements are all worth noting in detail. But the most striking thing about
the achievements of the Sandinista government in Nicaragua is their
revolutionary significance in an international context marked by virulent
reactionary policies in the United States and Europe. Nicaragua and its fellow
members countries of the ALBA Bolivarian Alliance (Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador,
Venezuela and a growing number of small Caribbean island nations) have
effectively reaffirmed the Right to Development and put into practice all its
principles and provisions. In particular, Nicaragua's record in relation to the
Right to Development has been exemplary.
Given the depressed
international economic context since 2007 and given Nicaragua's deepening
impoverishment up until then, the turn around effected by President Ortega and
his colleagues in just eight years in domestic terms has been truly
revolutionary. The Sandinista government has astutely combined traditional
trade and development relationships with a commitment to developing new trade,
investment and cooperation ties with a broad range of other countries around
the world. The Interoceanic Canal is the most vivid example of that commitment.
In its foreign policy,
Nicaragua's Sandinista government has given a consistently strong moral example
via its persistent efforts, for example, to negotiate its differences with
Costa Rica and Colombia. When those efforts have failed, Nicaragua has
consistently and openly insisted on the peaceful resolution of differences
through the mechanisms of international law. Despite being a small country, the
moral force of Nicaragua's example in terms of international relations is
extremely strong and explains why world leaders like Vladmir Putin and Dilma
Rousseff, among many others, regard President Daniel Ortega so highly.
Nicaragua's next
Presidential election will be in November 2016. In all likelihood the Frente
Sandinista will win by a huge margin just as it did in 2011, when Daniel Ortega
won the Presidency with well over 60% of the vote. By 2020, Nicaragua will be
transformed by major infrastructure projects enabling the country to eliminate
extreme poverty in the short term. These projects include, not only the
Interoceanic Canal and its auxiliary projects, but also a regional oil refinery
on the Pacific Coast and the major hydroelectric Tumarin project on the
Caribbean Coast.
In the medium and long
term, Nicaragua's revolutionary implementation of the principles and provisions
of the 1986 Declaration of the Right to Development is a powerful force for
regional stability in Central America. As a result of the Sandinista
government's policies since January 2007, Nicaragua is internationally regarded
as a bulwark against the insidious corruption and terrifying violence promoted
by regional organized crime and drugs trafficking. The achievements of
President Ortega and his colleagues since January 2007 are self-evidently cause
for optimism among the people of Nicaragua.
They are also a clear
example to countries of Central America and the Caribbean of what a small,
historically impoverished and exploited country can do under a government
driven by a true revolutionary commitment to improve the lives of its people.
Daniel Ortega, Rosario Murillo and their colleagues have put into practice the
revolutionary vision and example of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez. They have
also demonstrated how that socialist vision and example vindicate the 1986 UN
Declaration of the Right to Development.
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