Human Rights and the IMF

• Author: Sérgio Pereira Leite
• Position: Assistant Director in the IMF's Office in Europe

Human rights and macroeconomic stability are far from incompatible. Rather, they both play crucial roles in the fight against poverty. By supporting sound economic policies and encouraging constructive dialogue within civil society, the IMF contributes to human rights.

In his book Development as Freedom, Amartya Sen, Nobel laureate in economics, encourages us to look into the expansion of freedoms as both the definition of development and the means to achieve it. He notes, for example, that there is no record of a democratic country with a free press that has suffered from famine. He argues that economic indicators, such as GDP per capita and income distribution, fail to capture what is really important to people: the freedoms associated with human rights. In May 2001, the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights echoed this view in a forceful statement arguing for a better integration of human rights in development strategies.

But what exactly is a human rights-based development strategy? At the risk of oversimplification, one could define a rights-based approach to growth and poverty reduction as comprising six elements: (1) active protection of civil and political liberties; (2) pro-poor budgets and growth strategies; (3) policies geared toward ensuring that people receive adequate food, education, and health care; (4) broad participation in policy design; (5) environmental and social awareness; and (6) efforts to combat discrimination.

Since 1999, the IMF has stressed the central role of poverty reduction in its strategy for low-income countries. Recognizing that growth and macroeconomic stability are not enough to raise living standards, IMF Managing Director Horst Köhler (2001) has emphasized the participation of the poor in the development process and suggested that governments need to create an environment in which the poor can protect, sustain, and enrich their livelihoods. This approach, which seeks to strengthen countries' sense of "ownership" of their economic strategies, is neither very far from, nor incompatible with, a rights-based strategy.

The similarities between the two approaches are even more apparent when one looks at the definition of poverty put forward in the World Bank's World Development Report 2000/2001: Attacking Poverty. Poverty, according to the report, is "more than inadequate income or human development-it is also vulnerability and lack of voice, power, and representation." The IMF's close collaboration with the World Bank ensures that discrimination and environmental issues are not ignored in their joint approach to poverty alleviation. In their advice to member countries, the IMF and the World Bank stress the importance of establishing budgets that give high priority to meeting the needs of the poor.

Finally, it is important to note that nothing prevents member countries from incorporating human rights into their poverty reduction strategies. What a poverty strategy covers depends largely on the government's commitment and leadership, including its readiness to tackle the priorities identified through the participatory process.

What is the IMF's contribution to human rights?

The charter-Articles of Agreement-of the IMF directs it to promote international monetary cooperation and orderly exchange rate arrangements, facilitate the balanced growth of international trade, and help members resolve their...