Assessing Baxi's thesis on an emergent trade-related market-friendly human rights paradigm: recent evidence from Nigerian Labour-led struggles.

• Author: Okafor, Obiora Chinedu

Abstract

The objective of the article is to assess some of the sub-claims that emerge from Baxi's thesis on an emergent trade-related market-friendly human rights paradigm in the light of the available evidence regarding the intense contestations and confrontations that have occurred between Nigeria's politically and economically transitional Obasanjo regime and a local labour-led coalition. The piece sets out to ascertain the contextual and localised validity of these 'Baxian' sub-claims, within the wider context of the government vs. labour confrontations in Nigeria during the neo-liberal socio-economic reforms undertaken in that country between 1999 and 2005.

Keywords:

Baxi, Bretton Woods Institutions, Human Rights, Neoliberal Socio-Economic Reforms, Nigerian Labour Movements, Resistance.

1. Introduction

   In The Future of Human Rights, (1) Upendra Baxi developed a germinal thesis on the steady supplanting in our time of the paradigm of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDH) by an emergent trade-related market-friendly human rights (TREMF) paradigm. In a subsequent contribution, Baxi ably applied this thesis to his analysis of the UN Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights Norms formulated under the auspices of the (now defunct?) UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights. (2) As stated by Baxi himself, his overarching TREMF thesis is that:

   'The paradigm of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is being steadily, but surely, supplanted by that of trade-related, market-friendly human rights. This new paradigm seeks to reverse the notion that universal human rights are designed for the attainment of dignity and well-being of human beings and for enhancing the security and well being of socially, economically and civilisationally vulnerable peoples and communities.' (3)

   In my own view, a number of related sub-claims are embedded in Baxi's overarching thesis. These sub-claims will be isolated and discussed in the next section.

   The objective of the present enquiry is to assess some of these sub-claims in the light of the available evidence regarding the intense contestations and confrontations that have occurred between Nigeria's politically and economically transitional Obasanjo regime and a local labour-led coalition (between 1999 and 2005). The paper is organised into four main segments; this introduction, section 2, which provides a more detailed explication of the particular sub-claims of Baxi's "TREMF thesis" with which we are concerned in this paper. Section 3 provides a description and analysis of the character of the contestations and confrontations over socio-economic reforms that have characterised government/labour relations during Nigeria's post-1999 economic and political transition. And to conclude, section 4 offers an assessment of the explanatory power of the Baxian thesis in relation to the Nigerian evidence.

   This will of course not be the first work to directly draw upon and benefit from Baxi's influential work on the relationship between the current iteration of globalisation, and human rights. Baxi's thesis has already been applied most notably by Anthony Anghie in his own important historical work on globalisation, human rights and the third world. (4) However, this paper seeks to make a modest contribution to the relevant debates by applying Baxi's TREMF thesis to a specific Nigerian context that is in many ways allegorical of government/activist relations within most third world countries.

2. On the Nature of the Baxian TREMF Thesis

   In the course of fleshing out his thought-provoking TREMF thesis, Baxi developed a number of distinguishable but intimately related sub-claims. Only some of these sub-claims concern us here. The first such sub-claim is that the emergent TREMF paradigm (unlike the UDH paradigm) insists on promoting and protecting the collective human rights of various formations of global capital mostly at the direct expense of human beings and communities. (5) The distinctive quality here is Baxi's notion of the assignment of human (as opposed to ordinary legal) rights to various formations of global capital. To Baxi, the UDH paradigm differs from the TREMF paradigm in this way because although the UDH did make provision for a right to property that can be read to benefit any person (including presumably corporations and business associations), in the end the notion of property in the UDH is itself left substantially unsettled. (6) On the other hand, the TREMF paradigm makes the protection of the property interests of various formations of global capital central to its conception of the global social order. What is more, none of the two legally binding human rights covenants (the international covenant on civil and political rights and its sister covenant on economic, social and cultural rights), which--alongside the UDH--constitute the so-called international bill of rights, make provision for property rights. (7) Thus, to Baxi, "to say that the [TREMF paradigm] ... is just an unfoldment of the potential of [the] UDHR is plainly incorrect." (8)

   The second sub-claim is that, much more than in the past, the progressive state - or at least the progressive 'Third World' state--is now conceived as one that is a good host state to global capital; as one that protects global capital against political instability and market failure, usually at a significant cost to the most vulnerable among its own citizens; and as one that is in reality more accountable to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) than to its own citizens. According to this TREMF mindset, progressive states are those states that are much more soft than hard toward global capital. (9)

   The third Baxian sub-claim is that the new global order also requires the reproduction of a core of internal hardness within these same generally soft states. Thus, to paraphrase Baxi, a progressive state is also conceived under the TREMF paradigm as a state that is market efficient in suppressing and de-legitimating the human rights-based practices of resistance of its own citizens and that is also capable of unleashing (and, when necessary, does in fact unleash) a reign of terror on some of its citizens, especially those of them that actively oppose its excessive softness toward global capital.

   The fourth such sub-claim is that unlike the UDH paradigm, the TREMF paradigm denies a significant redistributive role to the state. (10) In fleshing out this fourth sub-claim, Baxi argues that the UDH paradigm which 'assigned human responsibilities to states...to construct, progressively and within the community of states, a just social order, national and global, that will at least meet the basic needs of human beings,' is being pushed aside to a worrisome extent by a TREMF paradigm that in contrast 'denies any significant redistributive role to the state; calls upon the state [and world order] to free as many spaces for capital as possible, initially by pursuing the three-Ds of contemporary globalization: deregulation, denationalization, and disinvestment.' (11)

   These are the sub-claims the contextual and localised validity of which will to some extent be ascertained in this paper. This will be done through a case study of recent government/labour confrontations over socio-economic reforms in Nigeria (19992005). To this end, the next section will focus on describing and analysing the nature of this government/labour confrontation. Emphasis will be placed on a discussion of the nature of the controversial reforms; the labour-led mass resistance to a key aspect of these reforms; the government's heightened repressive stance toward such resistance efforts; and the relative acquiescence--or at least studied ignorance--of key international actors in relation to the government's repressive behaviour. Following this next section, the TREMF thesis will be situated within this specific Nigerian context and evaluated for its explanatory power in relation to that environment.

3. The Government/Labour Confrontation in Nigeria (1999-2005)

   3.1. Neo-Liberal Socio-Economic Reform and Massive Fuel Price Hikes

   Substantially in line with the earlier structural adjustment programs (SAPs) that had been implemented in Nigeria and pursuant to the requirements of its latest IMF, WB and USA/EU inspired and backed socio-economic reform plan, the Obasanjo-led Nigerian government has since 1999 embarked on a program of state deregulation, denationalisation and disinvestment. (12) Sold as a 'home grown' set of policies, (13) the main thrust of the current reform program was the removal of 'subsidies' on petroleum products (leading inexorably to massive fuel price increases), the retrenchment of about 40 percent of the staff of the federal civil service (euphemistically referred to as 'rightsizing'), and the privatisation of state controlled enterprises (leading in most cases to denationalisation and the creation of an economic bonanza for a tiny cabal). (14) This reform program is most notably stated (or perhaps re-stated) in the so-called NEEDS Document. (15) In line with the dominant orthodoxy, this reform program has often been touted by the Obasanjo regime and its international backers as the solution to Nigeria's socio-economic woes.

   While several contentious issues can be discerned from the above description of the Nigerian government's reform program, the main focus of this government/labour confrontation during the 1999 to 2005 period under examination has been the rapid skyrocketing of motor vehicle fuel prices in Nigeria. (16) As one of the three central and inextricable components of the government's reform program, cumulatively massive and separately substantial increases in fuel prices have over the last few years been implemented by the Obasanjo regime. Between May 1999 and August 2005, fuel prices were hiked by...