Background on Equatorial Guinea

A. The Starkest Disparities on Earth
Equatorial Guinea is home to the starkest disparities between rich and poor on Earth. The nation’s Gross Domestic Product per person is an astounding $50,240, the second highest in the world after Luxembourg. The country is rich in natural resources: fine cocoa, hardwood timbers, and – since its discovery in 1995 – high grade crude oil. Thanks to that oil, the Equatoguinean government annually reaps oil royalties that amount to $6,000 per resident. The nation’s natural resources have spawned private offshore bank accounts holding hundreds of millions of dollars.
Yet the vast majority of Equatoguineans suffer grinding poverty. Of the nation’s 500,000 residents, only 30,000 have jobs in the formal economy. The rest receive so little institutional attention that basic statistics are lacking as to the percentage living under the poverty line. But their poverty translates concretely into widespread premature death. Children especially die at a painfully prodigious rate. More than 20% of children die before the age of six, a rate 25 times higher than that in Cuba or the United States. The life expectancy of an Equatoguinean – who is born into the world’s second wealthiest nation – is just 43 years.
B. The Reign of Impunity
These cruel disparities spring from governance by “one of the world’s most criminal states.” Equatorial Guinea – which is about the size of Maryland, comprised of an island and a small mainland territory next to Gabon – gained independence from Spain in 1968. The country soon gained notoriety as “The African Dachau.” In a campaign foreshadowing Pol Pot’s, its first head of state, Francisco Macias, killed or drove into exile one-third to one-half of the populace. Killings under the Macias regime were not only arbitrary and massive, but bizarre. One Christmas Eve, he publicly executed 150 victims in the national stadium to the song, “Those Were the Days, My Friend.”
In 1979, Teodoro Obiang, the National Guard commander and evidently one of the “principal architects of Macias’s rule of terror,” overthrew and executed Macias. For the last 28 years, President Obiang has ruled through a military dictatorship that suppresses through arbitrary detention and torture any hint of dissent.
There is no room in Equatorial Guinea to even question injustices, much less rectify them. Government authorization is required for private meetings of more than ten persons. Human rights organizations do not, and as a practical matter cannot, exist in the country. No international human-rights group is resident within the country, and even international aid agencies operate under surveillance. The government runs the only radio and TV station. There are no newstands or bookstores. The international media does not try to operate in the country. Simply possessing a foreign publication will land its possessor in jail. Obiang’s regime suspects a marginalized ethnic minority – the Bubi – of dissent, and so for hundreds of the Bubi, ethnicity alone has triggered dispossession, detention, torture, or rape.
There is no recourse to even the most outrageous violations to human rights. Security forces detain individuals without any judicial authorization. Prisoners are held incommunicado, indefinitely, and under life-threateningly abysmal conditions. Security forces may rape and torture prisoners at will. Victims utterly lack legal recourse – both during detention and afterwards, even when the government acknowledges that the torture was perpetrated and the detention groundless. According to the U.S. State Department’s report issued in 2006: “Security forces violated homes and arrested suspected dissidents, criminals, foreign nationals, and others, often without judicial orders, and confiscated property with impunity. When prisoners were released, their property was not returned. Family members were intimidated, sometimes detained, or evicted. After their release, arrested persons had no recourse.” The United Nations concurs: “any person can be deprived of his liberty at any moment and has no effective remedy to impede, rectify, or repair that situation.”
The experience of the United Nations with the Obiang regime gives a sense of the flavor of the impunity enjoyed by governmental actors. From 1979 to 2002, the United Nations annually sent a special rapporteur to Equatorial Guinea to report on human rights. Year after year, it condemned arbitrary detention and torture. Nothing ever changed: “the legal insecurity that prevails, the arbitrary detentions, inhuman treatment and torture . . . continue as if they were perfectly normal.”
Then, in 2001, the UN declined to send its rapporteur because the government sought, as a prerequisite to the visit, a monetary payment. The following year, its rapporteur made his last visit. Taking a momentary detour from his expected path, the rapporteur happened upon an undisclosed jail. The rapporteur found prisoners held in acutely life-threatening conditions, prisoners for whom there was absolutely no record of detention, and prisoners held for adultery, “by order of the bosses,” or “on behalf of” a multinational company. The UN’s reporter has not visited the country again, where arbitrary detention and torture is considered “perfectly normal.”
C. The Role of Multinationals
Equatorial Guinea’s leaders depend on multinational oil producers, and vice versa. The country is Africa’s third largest oil producer, and 97% of its export earnings come from oil. The U.S. is the biggest investor in the country, and U.S. oil companies extract more oil from Equatoguinean oil fields than any others. According to the International Monetary Fund, oil companies operating in Equatorial Guinea received “by far the most generous tax and profit-sharing provisions in the region.” The state received only 15 to 40 percent of the revenue from its oil fields, while the norm in sub-Saharan Africa was 45 to 90 percent.
For example, with respect to oil pumped from the same oil field shared by Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea, the French Total company pays Nigeria $8 per barrel while Exxon pays E.G. a mere $3 per barrel.
In 2006, the United States reopened its embassy in Equatorial Guinea (it was closed in 1995 after the ambassador, who was complaining of torture practices, was told he would return to the U.S. as a “corpse”). At a recent State Department press conference, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reassured President Obiang that he is “a good friend.” Paul Wolfowitz, whom President George W. Bush appointed to run the World Bank, has said of Obiang: “I was very impressed at . . . his government’s leadership.” In return, President Obiang’s son indicated the feelings are mutual, saying: “The United States, like China, is careful not to get into internal issues.”
The United States government has been criticized for “turning a blind eye” to the atrocities perpetrated by the Obiang government. U.S. oil companies have likewise been criticized for facilitating corruption. Experts have opined that it is well within the power of Americans to procure human rights improvements in Equatorial Guinea due to several unique circumstances.
First, the Equatoguinean government is reaping an astounding amount of wealth per capita. Just a fraction of it could guarantee a decent standard of living for all. Second, Equatorial Guinea is suddenly a tempting and vulnerable target for foreign invaders. The U.S. government could require, in exchange for security from such an invasion, meaningful advances in democratic reform and human rights. Third, oil companies are paying vast sums to a few Equatoguinean officials. By being scrupulous in their manner of making these payments, the companies could promote the transparency in the handling of those monies. Finally, oil companies are reaping an unusually high profit from Equatorial Guinea’s oil fields. They could – by funding hospitals, building infrastructure, and supporting protections for civil society – ensure that some of the nation’s bounty benefits its people.