International Organizations and Naming and Shaming: Does the International Monetary Fund Care about the Human Rights Reputation of Its Client?
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321717715397 |
| Date | 01 December 2017 |
| Published date | 01 December 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321717715397
Political Studies
2017, Vol. 65(4) 767 –785
© The Author(s) 2017
Reprints and permissions:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0032321717715397
journals.sagepub.com/home/psx
International Organizations and
Naming and Shaming: Does the
International Monetary Fund
Care about the Human Rights
Reputation of Its Client?
Byungwon Woo1 and Amanda Murdie2
Abstract
Does a country’s abuse of human rights influence its ability to get a loan from the International
Monetary Fund? We examine whether human rights conditions matter for the likelihood that a
country participates in an International Monetary Fund program. We argue that human rights
conditions are unlikely to be enough by themselves to influence International Monetary Fund
decision-making; there are simply too many countries with poor human rights conditions that
are under economic distress. Instead, it is the publicity and information that human rights
organizations provide about countries that reduce the likelihood of International Monetary Fund
program participation. We test the implications of this reasoning in a global analysis from 1990
to 2009 using an accepted model of International Monetary Fund program participation. We find
much support for our hypothesis. We further demonstrate that it is those countries closer to
the United States that are most likely to have human rights organization information reduce their
likelihood of International Monetary Fund program participation.
Keywords
IMF, INGO, human rights, shaming
Accepted: 20 March 2017
“Corporations and international financial institutions, such as the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund, have a duty to avoid complicity in human rights abuses.”
—Human Rights Watch, 2014 in defining human rights
1Division of Language & Diplomacy, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul, Republic of Korea
2Department of International Affairs, School of Public & International Affairs, University of Georgia, Athens,
GA, USA
Corresponding author:
Amanda Murdie, Department of International Affairs, School of Public & International Affairs, University of
Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, USA.
Email: murdie@uga.edu
715397PSX0010.1177/0032321717715397Political StudiesWoo and Murdie
research-article2017
Article
768 Political Studies 65 (4)
In late 2008 and early 2009, the Sri Lankan government, in a push to end the 20-year civil
war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), orchestrated a massive program
of “armed attacks against civilians” and “torture, kidnapping, hostage-taking, and extor-
tion with impunity” (US State Department, 2010). Around the same time as the height-
ened abuse, the Sri Lankan government approached the International Monetary Fund
(IMF) for financial assistance (Gunadasa, 2009). The country’s economy, hit by world-
wide financial crisis, was in shambles, and it wanted 1.9 billion US dollars from the IMF
quickly in order to remain solvent (IMF, 2009; Silva and Gunadasa, 2009).
Unfortunately for the Sri Lankan regime, its human rights practices were in the spot-
light. Many international human rights non-governmental organizations (human rights
INGOs or, as used hereafter, HROs) were publicly advocating against an IMF loan for the
regime, arguing that any assistance would just condone the ongoing human rights atroci-
ties. Amid all of this publicity, Human Rights Watch met with representatives of the
IMF’s Asia and Pacific Department and issued a public letter to the executive directors of
the IMF stating:
the loan will not achieve its intended objectives unless the Sri Lankan government takes serious
steps to safeguard the rights of internally displaced persons and ensure an effective humanitarian
response to the immediate conflict and post-conflict situations (Adams, 2009).
The international spotlight on the Sri Lankan abuses, due in large part to the work of
HROs, was effective at changing the nature of IMF policy-making toward the regime. As
Jo Becker (2012) reported:
although some governments insisted that human rights considerations should not influence IMF
lending, political pressure and international attention to the escalating crisis in Sri Lanka
convinced others that approving a loan to a government engaged in war crimes would not be
wise (Becker, 2012: 159).
The IMF was forced to delay a vote on the Sri Lankan loan until after the end of the
civil war. The IMF program eventually did pass, however, over the abstention of many
major Fund members, including the United States and the United Kingdom. In a November
2009 letter to Human Rights Watch, the then Managing Director of the IMF, Dominique
Strauss-Kahn, reiterated that the IMF was going to “monitor progress” on the country’s
“grave humanitarian problems” and invited further feedback from Human Rights Watch
on Sri Lanka’s human rights conditions (Strauss-Kahn, 2009). The letter of intent from
the Sri Lankan government reflected the IMF’s concern for post-conflict humanitarian
issues and included the detailed plan of humanitarian relief for internally displaced per-
sons and post-war reconstruction and reconciliation, which is rare in such documents (Sri
Lanka, 2009).
In the Sri Lankan situation, the information and advocacy provided by HROs were
critical in both delaying the loan and shaping the IMF’s attention to the humanitarian situ-
ation. Beyond Sri Lanka, what role does information about the human rights abuses of
would-be program participants play in IMF’s lending decisions? Do the human rights
conditions and information about them ever matter in international financial institutions’
decision to lend?
In this paper, we argue that human rights conditions are unlikely to be enough by
themselves to influence IMF decision-making; there are simply too many countries with
To continue reading
Request your trial