Prize donated by dictator Obiang sullies both Unesco and UN system

Democracy is complex, as Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former Secretary of State Madeline Albright said during a conversation I facilitated at a summit on human rights at the Ford Foundation.

Having spent the last 40-odd years of my professional life reporting on long-standing democracies, as well as some of those taking their first baby steps on the democratic trail, I couldn’t agree more.

But my years of reporting all over the world also led me to agree with their point that to harness that complexity in a way that allows citizens to benefit most from the system, those citizens have to be vigilant.

I am moved to these thoughts as Unesco is considering implementing the Obiang International Prize for Research in the Life Sciences which was suspended indefinitely in June 2010 and is funded by a $3 million gift from the president of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.

The prize and its revival now, is a highly controversial move, condemned by many human rights organisations, as well as the Committee to Protect Journalists on whose board I serve.

And some, like CPJ, see it as case study in the dilemma of how good organisations deal with receiving money for a good cause, but for the wrong reasons.

Political hypocrisy

It happens all the time that some leaders promote good causes abroad, while engaged in dubious, if not heinous practices at home. Political hypocrisy is, alas, a global phenomenon.

President Obiang, who has served for more than three decades, has done more than his share to thwart freedom of expression, by cowing the local press into self-censorship, preventing any probing coverage of ongoing international investigations of the ruling elite over alleged graft, or of the uprisings in the Arab world.

While Obiang proclaimed in August that “there are no human rights violations” in his country, six days later, authorities detained a German television crew and deleted footage of their interview with an opposition leader and images showing poverty deemed to tarnish the country’s image.

Still, the UN special rapporteur on torture has documented the systematic use of torture in Equatorial Guinea prisons.

Meanwhile, ongoing arrests, intimidation and obstruction of journalists, most of whom, as a matter of survival practice self-censorship, make the country one of the world’s most censored nations. Virtually all of the news media are owned and run by the government or its allies.

Of course, there are always other views, and President Obiang has denied any of the abuses he’s been accused of. He has garnered the support of some African heads of state and of the African Union, where he is a rotating chairman.

Baby steps

As recently as August, five Central African countries agreed to back Equatorial Guinea for a two-year seat on the Unesco executive board. The revival of the Obiang prize follows an AU resolution calling for its immediate implementation.

It is laudable to have a prize recognising research in life sciences, but what, if any name, should it carry? Is it not essential that a prize be in keeping with the values and actions of the prize sponsors, in this case both President Obiang and Unesco?

Despite the “baby steps to democracy” being taken by many African countries, it is still the case that in far too many of the continent’s countries, citizens are being deprived of the capacity to harness the complexities of democracy through their own engagement because their leaders have themselves harnessed the instruments that would allow their people the freedom to know their rights.

Moreover, there are still countries in the world — and not just in Africa — where there is kleptocratic rule, human rights abuses and obstruction of one of the basic instruments of a free society, often in the most cruel ways.

In such societies, despots manipulate their systems to remain in power in perpetuity.

CPJ and other organisations believe bestowing the Obiang Prize would not only send the wrong signal to those struggling to harness the complexity of democracy, but would also undermine the credibility of Unesco, and cast a blight on the entire UN system.

Ms Hunter-Gault, a freelance journalist and author, writes in her capacity as a board member of the Committee to Protect Journalists