SAN’A, Yemen — Arab leaders reached a broad consensus here yesterday that democratic principles may “rescue” the autocratic regimes of the region, but rejected the notion that democracy and freedom of expression can be imposed from outside.
Addressing the San’a Inter-Governmental Regional Conference on Democracy, Human Rights and the Role of the International Criminal Court, the biggest gathering of its kind ever held in the Middle East, Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh hailed democracy as a “rescue ship.”
“Democracy is the choice of the modern age for all people of the world and the rescue ship for political regimes,” Mr. Saleh told more than 600 delegates from 40 countries and international organizations, including the European Union, the Arab League, the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the International Criminal Court.
One reason the San’a conference was almost universally welcomed by the Arab world was because it was an initiative of the European Union, rather than of the United States. The U.S. delegation was low-key.
“Democracy and human rights, application of the rule of law, which are compatible with all faiths and cultures, are interdependent and inseparable, and human rights must underpin any meaningful conception of democracy in order to strengthen the foundations and its ability to promote and protect human rights,” the conference said in a final declaration.
Yemen, which introduced a multiparty parliamentary system in 1993, three years after unification, is the only Arab country that can stake a claim to being a working democracy, despite being the most impoverished.
“I believe no other country in the region would dare to host such a conference, especially now,” said Emma Bonino, former European commissioner for Humanitarian Affairs and a founder of the Italian nongovernmental organization No Peace Without Justice, a co-sponsor of the San’a meeting.
Opposition parties in Yemen largely dismissed the San’a conference as conforming to Arab governments’ entrenched habit of talking more than acting.
“When everyone goes back home, little action will follow,” one prominent opposition leader predicted.
“I hope it will not be a repetition of the 1999 Emerging Democracies Forum in San’a, which came out with a wonderful declaration that is still locked in a drawer awaiting implementation,” the opposition leader said.
Organized in the wake of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and President Bush’s stated intention of promoting democratic change in the region, the latest San’a gathering also came in the wake of two reports from the U.N. Development Program (UNDP), which co-sponsored the conference.
The UNDP reports lambasted the region’s dictators for a lack of political freedom, blanket press censorship, discouraging their people from exploring the world of ideas, repressing their women and stunting research in science and development.
However, the report’s Arab authors caution that the impetus for Mideast change must come from inside their own societies.
“Such reform from within, based on rigorous self-criticism, is a far more proper and sustainable alternative, in contrast to efforts to restructure the region from outside.”
At the conference, Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa echoed that sentiment, calling for democracy to be viewed “as a process, not a decision imposed by others.”
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in a similar message to the delegates, said: “Democracy belongs to the people. It cannot be imposed from the outside.”
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