EUROPE: EU ADMITS WEAKNESS OF ITS HUMAN RIGHTS EFFORTS ABROAD

By David Cronin   MORE BY THIS AUTHOR

BRUSSELS, Belgium, Mar. 20, 2008 (IPS/GIN) -- Formal discussions on human rights between the European Union and the governments of China, Iran and Russia are at risk of turning into a "meaningless ritual," an internal EU paper has admitted.

Under guidelines agreed upon in 2001, the EU has established about 30 “dialogues” on human rights issues with other countries concerning issues such as torture, the death penalty, women's and children's rights and freedom of expression.

While the guidelines were supposed to allow the EU to become more effective in defending human rights during its foreign policy activities, the EU’s own institutions acknowledge that their approach has suffered from a lack of consistency.

A document obtained by IPS said that although it is necessary to adopt a flexible approach "in order to react to specific circumstances," the differences in approach toward particular dialogues have been exploited by foreign governments. In some cases, those governments have analyzed how dialogues differ with a view to negotiating the "least onerous terms for themselves."

Drafted by the European Commission and officials working for the EU's 27 governments, the document said most dialogues have not been subject to regular reviews. Unless this situation is remedied, the discussions could be rendered meaningless, the paper added, recommending that a review of each dialogue should be undertaken "preferably every two years" by officials with firsthand knowledge of each country or region involved.

An additional problem identified by the paper is that benchmarks for measuring progress have been set for some dialogues but not for others. While the European Parliament and human rights campaigners have called for these benchmarks to be made public, the paper contends that doing so would be regarded as a "breach of confidentiality" by some foreign governments.

The paper said, too, that there is a "clear tendency" by some governments to seek that all discussion of their human rights record with the EU be restricted to those dialogues, in order to prevent such politically sensitive matters from being raised at a higher level.

Such complaints have repeatedly been leveled against China. No declaration on human rights was issued when top EU politicians met the Chinese leadership at a summit in Beijing last November, for example.

"The EU-China dialogue on human rights has been confined to a box outside other relations," said Vincent Metten, Brussels spokesman for the International Campaign for Tibet. "China has used it as a kind of pretext not to discuss these issues in other fora."

According to Marco Cappato, an Italian member of the European Parliament, the EU is "still far from a hard-hitting policy to uphold and promote human rights around the world."

A new report that he wrote for the European Parliament advocated a "radical intensification" of the biannual dialogue with China.

His paper, which was drafted before the unrest that recently broke out in Tibet, complained that China remains a "systematic violator of human rights." He further accused its government of failing to adhere to the pledges it made concerning the improved protection of political liberties in the period preceding the Olympic Games. Although reforms have been introduced that require the country's Supreme Court to review all death penalty cases, China is still believed to carry out the highest number of executions in the world. Precise details on the thousands of executions each year are, however, kept classified by the Beijing authorities.

Cappato has underscored, too, concerns about contacts with Iran and Russia.

Dialogue on human rights with Iran has been suspended since 2004, reportedly because of a lack of cooperation by the Iranian side. Cappato's report condemns the increasing use of capital punishment in Iran and the thousands of arrests that have followed a crackdown launched in April 2007 on behaviors considered immoral by officials.

On Russia, Cappato claimed that the EU has had only "limited success in bringing about policy change" through raising such issues as the conflict in Chechnya, the lack of press freedoms and minority rights and discrimination against homosexuals.

A similar point was made by the Russian Organization For Human Rights in October last year. Lev Ponomaryov, the group's chairman, said the EU's dialogue with Russia had reached a dead end because the issues explored had not been followed up by any concrete action.

Susi Dennison, a foreign policy specialist in Amnesty International's Brussels office, said there is a "clear need for the EU to assess what it is achieving" through the various dialogues.

She took issue with the recommendation that benchmarks should not be published. While she recognized that confidentiality may be necessary in specific cases, she said a general move toward greater transparency is vital.

"The fact that they are keeping the benchmarks secret suggests there is no way to hold the EU to account," she added.