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Japan's new embrace of peace diplomacy
By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO
- Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi's visit to
conflict areas and minefields in Sri Lanka at the start
of the year says volumes about the major changes under
way in Japan's traditionally conservative policy on
foreign aid.
At the forefront of this new thrust
is Japan's emerging peace diplomacy, which is expected
to be reflected in the review of guidelines for official
development assistance that Tokyo has announced for
mid-2003. This is the first review of aid guidelines
since 1992, and comes at a time of falling resources for
development assistance as well new global concerns. "We
certainly welcome the active use of official development
assistance for conflict resolution as a means of
ensuring that aid goes to the people rather than to
large wasteful projects as has been the case," said
Professor Hiroyuki Ohashi, who teaches international
development at Keisen University.
The changing
global climate, in addition to pragmatic concerns such
as limited resources, has already led to new initiatives
that indicate a change in Japan's checkbook diplomacy.
The most obvious and recent ones are Japan's involvement
in efforts to resolve Asian conflicts and help in the
reconstruction efforts afterward.
"Japan will
actively engage in efforts to resolve regional conflicts
toward the establishment of peace by permanently
resolving conflicts such as Afghanistan, Indonesia's
Aceh province, Mindanao in the Philippines and in Sri
Lanka," Kawaguchi told the Diet, Japan's parliament,
late last week.
Kawaguchi, the first foreign
minister of an industrialized country to visit
conflict-torn Jaffna in northern Sri Lanka, met leaders
and experts on the ongoing peace process, aimed at
reaching a political settlement to end a nearly
two-decade quest by minority Tamils for a homeland.
"Official development assistance is
indispensable to consolidating the peace process here,"
she said.
Japan also plans to host a donors'
conference to rebuild Sri Lanka, marking the first time
Tokyo has promoted aid before an official peace
settlement is reached between warring parties.
In December Japan hosted a conference on Aceh,
which that month signed a peace agreement that is now
under implementation. In January last year, donors
gathered here to pledge US$1.8 billion in aid for the
rehabilitation of Afghanistan.
Other signs
indicate Tokyo's policy change as well. For the first
time, Japan has begun to send its experts to draw up a
civil code and civil procedure code in Cambodia,
departing from its usual focus on big infrastructure
projects. This is aimed at providing support for
projects such as election monitoring and the development
of human-rights laws.
Also this month, the
government said it would fund a program to collect small
weapons as a condition for providing reconstruction
assistance in peace diplomacy. Japan has also made
available the extension of up to $8.5 billion in debt
forgiveness for aid recipients following certain
conditions.
Former United Nations diplomat
Yasushi Akashi, Japan's representative for peace
building and rehabilitation and reconstruction in Sri
Lanka, urges the dispatch of Japanese civilian police
and specialists to that South Asian island nation.
During her visit, Kawaguchi also offered low-interest
loans to build power generating facilities, roads and
agricultural development in the rebel-held north and
east of the country.
In many ways, experts say,
a successful shift in foreign-aid policy would help
maximize the impact of Japanese aid even with the
financial constraints Tokyo is facing.
Japan's
aid budget in 2001 stood at $9.65 billion, down 27.2
percent from the previous year and giving to the United
States the position as the world's top donor that Tokyo
used to hold. A further 10 percent cut is estimated for
fiscal 2002, which ends next month, with the Foreign
Ministry reporting that funds will decrease another 5.8
percent for fiscal 2003. The cuts reflect the country's
poor economic performance - half a percent gross
domestic product growth recorded for 2002.
Experts welcome the focus on improving the
quality of Japanese aid, saying a humanitarian and peace
approach has less room for the weaknesses of the aid
program - funds used to build expensive infrastructure
that often benefit the country's own contractors.
Critics complain that the process has
facilitated Japanese commercial interests in developing
countries, leading to recent corruption scandals and
huge trade surpluses benefiting Japan.
"Promoting peace will call for spending in
ravaged areas to support the rehabilitation of refugees,
rebuilding schools and hospitals and mine-clearing, in
contrast to expensive infrastructure projects," Hisashi
Nakamura, a well-known expert on development assistance,
explained at a recent seminar.
Statistics for
Sri Lanka, for instance, show that while Japan provided
some $461 million - 69 percent of overall aid to Sri
Lanka in 2000 - grants comprised only 39 percent of that
amount. Between 1999 and 2002, just $25 million of
Japanese aid reached areas in devastated north and east
of the country, despite their growing humanitarian
needs. Total aid from Japan was some $1.15 billion
during the same period.
"The data [do] not
indicate Japanese aid is sensitive to domestic political
conflict," said Dr W D Lakshman, a political scientist
at Colombo University.
(Inter Press
Service)
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