Jonathan F. Fanton,
President, MacArthur Foundation

Jonathan F. Fanton is president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, a private, independent grant-marking institution based in Chicago, Illinois, with offices in India, Mexico, Nigeria and Russia.

The Foundation, which was established in 1978, works with civil society groups and governments to improve human rights conditions and the preservation of the environment.

The president of the Foundation, accompanied by his colleagues, was in Addis Ababa to talk to officials from the African Union to find out ways for helping the African Human and People's Rights Court.

Bruck Shewareged had a moment with Jonathan F. Fanton and asked him about the challenges of improving human rights all over the world. Excerpts:

To begin with, can you briefly tell us what the Foundation does?

MacArthur Foundation was established thirty years ago. The money came from an American businessman, John MacArthur, who made his fortune in insurance and real estate. The foundation is governed by fifteen independent private citizens with no government affiliation. It raises no funds. So all the money it gives out is from the original gift. Our current endowment is
USD 6.5 billion. We give out about USD 300 million a year.

In the United States, we work on improving education, carrying out juvenile justice reform, providing affordable housing, conducting preservation and helping American cities get better and stronger. We have deep interest in providing an opportunity for people who are smart but poor. They need a helping hand to realize their full potential.

Outside the United States, we work in sixty countries with offices in Moscow, Abuja, Mexico City, New Delhi and we hope some day in Beijing.

Our programmes deal with conservation, bio-diversity preservation, population and reproductive health, migration and mobility, international peace and security, human right and international justice. We've been working in Africa for a quarter of a century in 18 countries, although most of those countries are part of our environment programme. Our major focus in Africa is in Nigeria where we work on human rights, population reproductive health and higher education. We are part of a six-foundations-partnership working to improve institutions of higher education all across Africa in ten countries and forty universities. MacArthur Foundation works, however, in Nigeria on higher education.

 What is the basis for you to select a particular country and start a project there?

You asked a profound question because the hardest decision we face is what issue to take on and where to work. There is no easy answer. The world has many challenges and opportunities. Our money is modest when you think of all the places where we work and the issues we deal with. We understand that our role is to be a catalyst, to frame an issue, support research on policy analysis that might suggest to government and the civil society how to move foreword.  We start pilot projects to show how, for example, building a rural health clinic that deals with maternal mortality can operate.

So our tools are research, policy analysis, supporting the civil society, helping demonstrate inventions that, if they work, would be undertaken on larger scale by government or the private market.

In choosing our issues, we have a mission statement that broadly focuses on improving the human condition. We seek a more just, humane, and peaceful world. So the issues we pick would be in service of that general mission.

Conservation, population, migration and human rights all fit together. Preserving the environment requires a sensible balance between the needs of nature and the needs of people. Sustainable development has an impact on migration. Human rights is fundamental to everything we do.

While we do not work on democracy promotion per se, we invest in the prerequisites for democratic development such as media rights and NGOs that protect and advance individual liberties.

What is the purpose of your trip to Addis Ababa?

MacArthur has a programme that seeks to advance international justic. And by international justice, we mean establishing norms of behaviour that protect individuals and advance opportunities for individuals, but also a system of justice that provides a recourse for people when they have exhausted opportunities for justice within their own nations.

The International Criminal Court is one element of our work. We have been active in supporting the court, right from the very first conference in Rome that gave rise to the treaty that shaped the court. We're also interested in strengthening the UN human rights mechanisms. So we've supported the High Commissioner for Human Rights. We've supported ad-hoc tribunals. And very importantly, we believe regional human rights commissions and courts have a major rotle to play. So the purpose of this visit is to learn more about the African Human Rights Commission, and about the new African Court of Human and People's Rights.

We have done some modest grant making. One grant was to the Alliance for Africa that has been helping the African court and working with the coalition of NGOs trying to support the development of the court. So the purpose of this trip is to learn more about the commission and the court and see if there are ways for a private foundation can be helpful to its development.

What are some of the main challenges you face when you start working in one country?

The first challenge is to understand the issue and understand the context. We are based in America. But our perspective is not only an American perspective. So we understand that each country is different, has a different history and tradition. We respect those differences.

So the first task when we come to a country is to try to educate ourselves about the context, about the issue and to listen to people who know best or people who live in that country. The next challenge is to define the issue and to craft a strategy for adding value or for helping. And beyond that we need to choose people and organizations with whom to work.

Most of our money goes to non-governmental organizations, civil societies, and the universities. But on occasions we work with reform-minded elements in a government.

Let's take Nigeria where we've been working. We were asked by the Minister of Justice to help support a review of the laws of the Federation. This meant helping the government engage experts to analyse present legal form of Nigeria against its constitution and against international norms, and treaties which it had signed.

What the review found out was that during the (military) dictatorship many laws and edicts were placed on the books that were inconsistent with the constitution. This review led to fundamental reform of the laws of the Federation which basically makes sure that the current laws were consistent with the Nigerian constitution. That will be an example of a project we took on.

We also work with the National Human Rights Commission in Nigeria to develop a kind of action to protect in advance human rights in the country. At the same time, we've done some work that makes the government uncomfortable. We are concerned about police abuse. We chose that as an issue because the police are the face of government that ordinary citizens see most often. If the police are corrupt or abusive and can't be trusted, it is hard then to have broader trust of the government as a whole. Reforming the police was a real contribution to developing a stable base for democracy.

One of the reasons we work in Nigeria on higher education and through this partnership of other foundations across the continent is that we believe that strong and independent universities are critical to the evolution of a healthy and sustainable democracy. If you think about it, round the world, you don't find democracies unless you have free and independent universities. And the reverse is also true, i.e. dictatorships and authoritarian societies don't tolerate academic freedom. So we believe that the lynchpin of democratic development is not only a free and independent university system but also free media. Those two areas are critical, and that's why in many places, we work with universities and are trying to protect the free press.

Speaking of media freedom, a new press law has been proposed in Ethiopia, and parliament is debating it. Since you come here you may have heard that it is very much draconian law and stifles press freedom. Your comment about it, please?

I'm deeply concerned about not only the proposed new media law but also the proposed new law on NGOs. I think both will make it harder for vigorous discussion to be carried out in a public space about important issues that the people should be talking about and learning about.

Free  press and a vibrant civil society are indispensable prerequisites for healthy democracy.

Isn't a skeptic attitude by governments a challenge for you? In many instances, governments consider foreign NGOs as the interfering type of institutions?

We accept the fact that organizations we support often will advocate policies that the government of the moment doesn't like. That isn't only true in Africa. It is also true in the United States. We support Human Rights Watch which has been highly critical of the United States' government conduct of the war in Iraq. It's been highly critical of its practices of detaining people in Guantanamo Bay. We support the American Civil Liberties Union that has been very critical of the Patriot Act in the United States. So we are used to supporting groups that are critical of governments. That obviously is another dimension when we are supporting a group like Human Rights Watch that would come to Ethiopia and do a report on the conduct of the government in Ogaden. We understand that makes the government uncomfortable. But we were prepared to do that. We also work with governments, however. That's why I use the Nigeria example where we work with the Ministry of Justice. We also funded NGOs that have been critical of governments.

A new law is in the pipeline which many NGOs fear will severely curtail their activities. Aren't you coming in the wrong time should you decide to work here?

Well, to be clear with it, our visit here is mainly involved with the African Union, and talking about the African Commission on Human Rights and the new court. We have not done any work as such in Ethiopia. That is not the purpose of this trip. It has been really about these continent-wide commission and court, although we do support groups like Human Rights Watch that have been active in Ethiopia.

Many are highly critical of the African Union Commission for its election reports in the continent which usually support the government in power. The critics feel that the commission is the reflection of those "corrupt" governments in many of the African States. And you still want to engage the commission?

Our focus is trying to help the regional human rights court develop. So we are working with NGOs that will develop cases both for the commission and eventually the court. We are perfectly open to working with the commission and the court if there are needs they have that we can address, just as we worked with the European Court of Human Rights.

In Mexico, for example, we supported NGOs that develop cases for the Inter-America Commission. In Russia, the same thing is true. NGOs that we've supported have developed a lot of cases that have made their way through the Russian justice system, and eventually to the European Court.

Are they usually effective? What's your evaluation of such a court?

I think the regional courts, that have fully developed, i.e. the European and Inter-America courts, are more effective. A good number of cases that have come from Russia have been decided against Russia. Cases involving media freedom and police abuse where monetary penalties have been awarded were handled by the European court and the Russian government has paid the money. The same is true in  Mexico.

Can you elaborate more on the penalties against the Russian government?

They have been, in effect, given a financial penalty for censuring newspapers, or abusive behaviour by police that injured people. These are cases that have made their way to the European Court where the government has been found to have committed infringement of rights, and penalized.

It's not surprising that Russian judges don't like to have their cases appealed to a regional court. We hear that the quality of justice in local areas around Russia is getting better as judges understand that if they commit procedural violations, they are subject to have their judgment appealed.

You hope that will be the case for Africa, too?

Yes. At this very slow process, it takes years, of course. But it is just one part of the overall effort to respect human rights and improve justice. The ultimate objective, I think, of regional courts and commissions is to help national systems improve the administration of justice within nations. I think that justice is best delivered closer to home if the justice system is independent, competent and fair.

Regarding the environment, in which areas are you mostly involved?

There are a number of ways of approaching the environment. Ours lense is through bio-diversity preservation. So we look for parts of the world where the number of endemic species is high and where so far they're present in abundance but could be under threat in future.

There are eight places in different regions: Eastern Himalayas (Nepal, Buthan), the Mekong Delta (Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia), the Eastern slope in the Andeans (Bolivia, Peru, Equador), South Pacific (Fiji, Solomon Islands, Papua New-Guinea), the Caribbean. And in Africa, we work in Aburtin Rift i.e. the Great Lakes region. It would be Rwanda, Burundi, Congo and Uganda. We also work in Madagascar.

We also help governments create large protected areas both on land and coastal marine areas i.e. to get the environmental laws perfected, to create national parks and protected areas and then to strengthen the ability of governments to manage those protected areas.