monitoring human rights is a good investment

The UK government has announced it is to stop monitoring human rights abuses around the globe. Previously the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) produced an annual summary that was used within government and beyond, as an invaluable guide to which countries were oppressing their own citizens. Initiated by the much missed Robin Cook, it was a good investment for two reasons:

1) So long as the UK continues to preach to other nations the virtues of accountability, transparency, democracy and human rights, it needs to ensure Britain is not propping up repressive or corrupt governments by selling them things, especially weapons or torture equipment, or laundering their dirty money. Ifall the UK cares about is trade, then we should have the honest to admit as much. If, however, we continue to lecture other countries, we should keep our own exporters in order. We should also be wary of selling arms and cosying up to the kind of regimes that may one day turn against us, as we've seen in Iraq and Afghanistan.

2) The FCO review was useful in stopping the UK government itself propping up appalling regimes through its generous foriegn aid programme, in the form of donations from the Department for International Development (DFID). In some regrettable cases DFID supports dictatorships with donations, for either geopolitical or other\reasons (too tedious to go into here - but email me if you are interested). We have a much better chance of restraining the UK's misguided generosity if we can produce its own FCO data indicating the disappointing human rights record of the kleptomaniacs we are propping up.

The cost of the FCO annual human rights review was tiny compared to the sums handed out under the guise of international development aid.