EDITORIAL

Scrap Jackson-Vanik restrictions

The 1974 Jackson-Vanik Amendment was a landmark piece of legislation aimed at securing a fundamental human right. Sponsored by Sen. Henry Jackson (D-Wash.) and Rep. Charles Vanik (D-Ohio), it prohibited the extension of U.S. government credits and most-favored-nation trade status to any country without a market economy that didn't allow its citizens to emigrate freely. Its original target was the Soviet Union, whose emigration restrictions for Jews created countless numbers of what came to be known as "refuseniks." Linking freedom of emigration to U.S.-Soviet trade, the law succeeded, helping tens of thousands of Soviet Jews emigrate.

Today, however, the USSR is gone. And the situation in what at first were called the "former Soviet republics," then the "newly independent states," has changed dramatically. U.S. legislation, therefore, has to be brought up to speed. That's why we say it's time to scrap the Jackson-Vanik restrictions that prevent Ukraine from obtaining permanent normal trade relations (PNTR, to those who love the lingo of bureaucracy), formerly known as most-favored-nation trade status, with the United States.

The Baltic states were "graduated out" of the Jackson-Vanik restrictions early on, back in 1991; Kyrgyzstan and Georgia were graduated in 2002. And there has been much talk of doing away with Jackson-Vanik restrictions for Russia, as in November 2001 President George W. Bush acknowledged that Russia had made "important strides on emigration and the protection of religious and ethnic minorities, including Russia's Jewish community."

As reported in The Washington Post early this year, the administration lists eight other former Soviet republics it wants Congress to exempt from Jackson-Vanik: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Moldova, Tajikistan, Kazakstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. (Though the latter two have less than stellar human rights records, post 9/11 they are important allies in the international anti-terrorist coalition.) Belarus, however, remains off the list, thanks mostly to its autocratic leader, Alyaksandr Lukashenka. How to go about removing the Jackson-Vanik restrictions has been the subject of much discussion, and among the issues is whether this should be done country-by-country, or as a group.

On March 13 Rep. Bob Schaffer, a co-chair of the Congressional Ukrainian Caucus, introduced legislation (H.R. 3953) specifically aimed at graduating Ukraine from Jackson-Vanik restrictions in recognition of the country's "substantial progress" in the area of human rights as well as its cooperation in the "global struggle against international terrorism."

We hail Rep. Schaffer's initiative, and we urge others in Congress to support this important legislation. Ukraine, which has one of the best records of protecting minorities' rights among states once part of the USSR, has earned its graduation.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, March 17, 2002, No. 11, Vol. LXX

| Home Page |