Political freedoms and civil liberties are under greater threat now, despite the growth and expansion of democracies during the 1980s and 1990s, warned the United Nations Development Program in its 2002 Human Development Report.

The report, released in Kuala Lumpur yesterday, stated that 106 out of almost 200 countries in the world still limit fundamental civil liberties and political freedoms, although 140 of them claim to hold free and fair elections.

"Most of these 'limited' democracies suffer from shallow political participation, where citizens have little trust in their governments and are disaffected from politics, or the countries are dominated by a single powerful party or group despite formal elections," the report said.

This year's report, entitled 'Deepening democracy in a fragmented world', said only 80 countries with 55 percent of the world's people are fully democratic.

UNDP resident representative Dr Maxine Olson who launched the report said that the challenge to democracy is the empowerment of people with democratic principles, rather than see it imported from and imposed by a colonial parent, she said.

Democratic governance should include fair representation, free elections, independent judiciary, a vibrant civil society and independent media, she added.

Democracy and development

The report also disputed the assumption among developing countries that democracy must be sacrificed in order to achieve economic growth and social progress.

Recent studies show no correlation between authoritarianism or democracy and a country's economic growth rate.

If at all, stated the report, there are good reasons to believe that democracy and growth were compatible because democracies offer peaceful conflict resolution and promote greater accountability.

The report revealed that while riots and demonstrations were more common in democracies, they did not disrupt development.

"On the other hand, social unrest is much more destabilising in dictatorships with greater frequency for wars, thus incurring higher economic cost."

At the forum held in conjunction with the launch, guest panelist Prof Dr KS Jomo, an economist, said the report clearly debunked any notion of trade-offs between democracy and development.

"Democracies have a clear edge over authoritarian regimes in handling crisis and displacement," said the Universiti Malaya lecturer.

Citing from the report, he said several countries have since returned to authoritarian rule as they have failed to consider non-economic aspects of human development as progress.

"This observation should be familiar to most Malaysians because there is a growing gap between merely casting ballots and having a participatory civil society," added Jomo.

The UNDP report also found that economic growth and human development did not automatically correspond because economic and political decisions dominated by a few, often resulted in inequity.

"Imbalances in political power often subvert the principle of one person, one voice, and the purpose of democratic institutions.

"Therefore, judicial proceedings and regulatory institutions are undermined if elite dominate them at the expense of women, minorities and the powerless," the report said.

Global concerns

The report also acknowledged that the core principles of democracy empowerment, participation and accountability are not only individual country concerns but global ones.

"As new democracies struggle to lay the foundations of democratic governance, new forces and institutions are exerting powerful influences on people's lives," it noted.

Rules of international trade alone have worked against the interests of developing countries.

For example, the report cited the US$1 billion-a-day domestic agricultural subsidies by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) members as trade barriers.

Since the subsidy amount itself is six times more than the development assistance afforded by OECD members, it is impossible for developing countries to breach these markets.

However, Jomo and Institute of Strategic and International Studies director-general Mohamed Jawhar Hassan felt that while the report addressed global inequities, more can be done to address the tactics of a few rich countries that push their own agendas at the expense of poorer, developing countries.

Both stressed the need to address the growing power of global institutions in recent years, such as the World Trade Organisation and the International Monetary Fund, which exclude from decision-making the poor developing countries that are most affected by their policies.

Every year since 1990, the UNDP has commissioned an independent team of experts leaders in academia, government, civil society to do the Human Development Report to explore major issues of global concern.