LAHORE, Dec 2: International Federation of Philosophical Societies president Prof Ioanna Kucuradi has said donor countries’ conditions for aid were harmful for democracy and human rights and aimed only at the promotion of free market economy.

Delivering the 12th Dr C. A. Qadir Memorial Lecture on ‘Social and Global Justice’ at the Alhamra Art Centre here on Monday, Prof Kucuradi said the donor countries were using ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’ interchangeably as mere slogans while concentrating on support for multi-party elections. The human rights were eventually replaced by democracy and the donors lost interest in them once the elected governments were in place to follow their dictates, she added.

She said the donors had confined the democracy to elections both in verbal terms and practice. Countries were labelled as democratic as soon as the elections had taken place. The fact that democracy took centuries to develop — a fact to which donors could testify themselves — was forgotten and it was assumed that such instant democracies could and would guarantee human rights and fundamental freedoms. Both history and multitude of current examples had proved the assumption wrong, she maintained.

She said the donor linked aid to progress in democratization and privatization, which was a direct implication of the free market economy. “Cut in spendings in social services and advocacy of privatization were the two main trends in the current social sector policy of the donors,” she argued.

Prof Kucuradi was of the view that the economic development could not be accelerated by shifting the social sector responsibilities to private sector. The so-called development aid given to the developing countries was in fact a loan advanced for the recovery of interest.

She said the developing countries should protect the basic rights of their people and ask the donors to provide them grants linked to increase in protection of rights like nutrition, health and education instead of bringing them in the free market trap by extending loans under the garb of development aid.

She said a misconception of freedoms among the developing countries seemed to be the main cause of considering the free market a way out from poverty.

She said the free market demand simply meant that the government should not interfere in the economic activities of the individuals at all. The linkage of free market with human rights thus betrayed an intention to protect the economic freedom as a basic right. The so-called development aid had given some people lavish lifestyles but had increased the number of those deprived of the means to fulfil even their basic needs.

Federal Shariat Court former chief justice Mian Mahboob Ahmad said in his presidential address that the world was being disillusioned with globalization as it had given rise to injustice in every field.

He said Britain and France had created Israel under the garb of promoting Arab nationalism to destabilize the Ottoman Empire. Destruction of Afghanistan under the garb of war against terror was the latest example of global injustice. This had happened because the UN was being used for advancing the interests of the advanced countries.

He said the developed countries focused the study of injustice only on the developing countries and ignored the injustice being done to their own people.