Human Rights Developments

Defending Human Rights

The Role of the International Community

The World Bank's first ever consultative group meeting in Zambia in July provided greater transparency, due to good teamwork between Zambia's bilateral donors, a new more open team at the World Bank, and some political risk taking by the minister of finance. Human rights issues were openly discussed as integral to the larger concept of "good governance" during the meeting, and NGO observers attended for the first time. Sweden, the United Kingdom, Denmark, and the U.S. delivered strong speeches pushing for a further improvement in the government's human rights record. Surprisingly, the Netherlands was muted in voicing its human rights concerns. Zambia's cooperating partners indicated that they had plans to make available slightly over U.S. $1 billion (with U.S. $355 million for balance of payments and in support of Zambia's economic reform and poverty reduction programs). A number of donor countries retained performance-related benchmarks for balance of payments release.

The U.S. was not a major donor to Zambia. Its main focus was on Zambia as a country with three unstable neighbors: Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and Zimbabwe. The U.S. also continued to support President Frederick Chiluba's mediation efforts in the war in the DRC.