Germany's Rule of Law Interventions, Like thos Elsewhere, Need to Follow the Laws, Principles and Measures that Germany and the International Community Claim to Promote.

• Author: Lempert, David

The German Government Foreign Ministry's (Auswartiges Amt) recently issued a report (July 2019) on its plans for "Promoting the rule of law: a new strategy for the Federal Government" with the stated goals of "crisis prevention", "conflict management" and "peace building". It is filled with the standard sweet-sounding cliches, like "sustainability" and "doing no harm", which other governments and international organisations have routinely used--and in similar initiatives, over some five decades. Given that such previous initiatives have faced wide criticism, the German Government's recent statement is either grossly uninformed or deliberately irresponsible.

Indeed the German Government itself has already funded projects with this stated orientation, through international organisations and even some of its own agencies, with several decades of intervention into what is referred to as projects in the sector of RoL (Rule of Law), AoJ (Administration of Justice), and D/G/HR (in English) (Democracy/Governance/Human Rights). Germany has significant experience in participating in such interventions: in effect, they have supported what are the failures of the World Bank (of which Germany is a member) to follow international development and human rights law, and instead, have prioritised trade and short-term "growth". In place of rights and sustainability, the German Government has also supported similar failures within the United Nations system and also the EC (which Germany also funds) and in some of Germany's own initiatives (now expanding) through GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH) and the Max Planck Foundation, promoting legal advice and training. A central issue is that these agencies and their projects have avoided adhering to public measures of results or accountability, and the German Government seems to be continuing on the same path. The reality is that most of these projects, despite claims to the contrary, have been used to promote other, hidden, agendas. In this specific sector, funds can easily be directed to judges and foreign ministries in the hope of a more favorable outcome for a country's businesses or business sector. This can be to the exclusion of grassroots democracy, civil society, human rights, and sustainability, particularly in terms of the survivability of the globe's minority cultures. In the very area of "rule of law" that, by definition, requires specific measures, accountability...