Taylor taste justice, but West Africa continues to be denied it

Taylor tastes justice, but West Africa continues to be denied it
As the EU bows down to big business and continues to exploit the Global South in search of cheap raw materials and energy, what impact will Charles Taylor's conviction really have on a region ravaged by natural resource conflict?

Last month Charles Taylor, former Liberian President and warlord, was convicted on eleven counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes in a special court of Sierra Leonean and international judges at The Hague. Taylor's crimes were horrific. For fuelling fighting across the entire region, including Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Cote d'Ivoire, the 64 year old faces up to 80 years in prison when he is sentenced later this month. War in West Africa was fuelled by the exploitation of natural resources, with the natural wealth of the region being plundered by warlords and used to fund arms and ammunition to continue the conflict. The blood diamonds of Sierra Leone are now infamous, while in Liberia transnational companies (TNCs) ran their own Taylor-sanctioned militias to ensure they could continue to extract the resources and wealth of the country while raping, beating and destroying entire villages. Exposing this terrible exploitation earned Silas Siakor the Goldman Environmental Prize, but the work of Liberian civil society is far from over as it continues to struggle to assert social and environmental justice for communities that are being exploited by TNCs. As Taylor tastes justice in The Hague, the people of West Africa- and indeed the entire African continent- continue to be denied it; the exploitative practices that fuelled conflict in the region continue to occur. Now that oil has been discovered along the West African coast, and as the Global North gets more and more desperate for fossil fuels and natural resources to solve its energy crises, the future could be far from peaceful.
The tanks and trucks of UNMIL-the United Nations Mission in Liberia- continue to be an all pervading presence trundling through the streets of Monrovia. But UNMIL has one eye on the road out of Liberia, and as they depart over the coming years things must change in order to ensure that profits cannot be put so devastatingly before people ever again. The European Union and the governments of its member states have a crucial role to play in helping to support the people of the region to achieve the justice they deserve, but the EU's efforts have been mixed on this front. Now, more than ever, we need to Push Europe to do the right thing!
Having been subjected to widespread lobbying since the 90s, the EU's trade policy demands are now virtually identical to what EU business lobbyists want, including "the unlimited repatriation of profits from foreign subsidiaries"- in other words the complete sucking of resources and wealth out of countries in the Global South and into the pockets of TNCs. Since the Lisbon Treaty in 2009, member-states have delegated their ability to negotiate on international investment policy to the European Commission. The road is now open for the EU to collectively neo-liberalise countries of the South under the guise of foreign direct investment which is falsely sold as the best way to help Southern nations develop. UNCTAD notes that 'there is little evidence to suggest that foreign direct investment in Africa (or elsewhere in the developing world [sic]) plays a leading or catalytic role in the growth process'. This has been described as the new Scramble for Africa
In order to create opportunities for big business to profit from 'emerging markets', Europe has implemented Economic Partnership Agreements and Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPA) with various states around the world. Its VPA with Liberia was signed in 2011. This agreement has enormous potential for good. It can regulate the forestry and agriculture sector, helping to prevent the sort of illegal logging practices that fuelled conflict in the past while also ensuring that the local governance structures are strengthened to prevent corruption and support communities to claim a share of the benefits from agricultural and logging activities. These are very welcome benefits, certainly, but at best they will be a short term panacea if they are used only to mask the long term effects of the liberalisation of Liberian markets. Liberalisation will ensure an unfair competitive advantage for European companies while undercutting local business and preventing sustainable social, economic and environmental development in Liberia.
Charles Taylor may be going behind bars very shortly, but he is only a symbol- albeit a tremendously violent one- of this system of exploitation that we have yet to overcome. With its trade and investment policies, the EU is showing its inability to stand for what is right and just where it really counts (economically) in its relationships with the Global South, undermining its increasingly farcical claims to be a bastion of human rights and good practice in development. The EU member-states' desperate quests for natural resources to solve energy security problems has seen such dangerous and unsustainable technologies as fracking and tar sands being promoted within the EU's own borders. As we fight to oppose these hazardous practices around Europe, let's remember that we must also fight in solidarity with those in the Global South whose lives and livelihoods are being affected by agreements signed in our name. Let us call on Europe to listen to its citizens on the streets rather than businessmen in boardrooms (and they are invariably always men, a fight for another day...). To commit Taylor to life imprisonment with one hand, and potentially sign away the livelihoods of millions with another, would make a mockery of the suffering of the people of West Africa and suggest that the North's true concern with Taylor was not a question of his immorality, but that he too openly violated human rights for Northern TNCs to continue to profit from the pillage without consumer outcry. As the converging crises of capitalism and climate change continue to strain European governments, let's make sure than we continue to cry out for them to act in a way that is socially just and environmentally sustainable and ensure that Taylor's conviction is not a hollow act, but the beginning of a fair and equitable relationship between Europe and West Africa.