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RIGHTS: EU Urged to Fill Global Leadership Void

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Jan 11 2007 (IPS) - With Washington’s reputation as a leader on human rights gravely damaged by abuses committed in its five-year-old “global war on terror”, the European Union (EU) remains the only credible candidate for filling the vacuum, Human Rights Watch said Thursday.

But the EU’s “lowest-common-denominator approach” to taking collective stands on human rights, its expanding membership, as well as its members’ own complicity in some of the abuses associated with the war on terror, have made it difficult to provide the leadership that is so desperately needed, according to the New York-based group.

“Since the U.S. can’t provide credible leadership on human rights, European countries must pick up the slack,” according to Kenneth Roth, HRW’s executive director, who released the latest in the group’s annual “World Report” series here Thursday. “Instead, the European Union is punching well below its weight,” he added.

The 556-page report, most of which covers human rights-related developments during the past year in some 70 countries around the world, was released to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the first shipment of detainees captured in Afghanistan and Pakistan to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The treatment of those and other detainees seized by U.S. forces in the George W. Bush administration’s war on terror contributed heavily to the dramatic plunge in Washington’s credibility as a human rights leader, according to the report, which added that its ability to recover its previous standing depends in major part on the actions of the new Democrat-led Congress.

“The new U.S. Congress must act now to remedy the worst abuses of the Bush administration,” Roth said.

But with both China and Russia embracing friendly dictators abroad, as well as cracking down on dissidents at home, and with many of the developing world’s new democracies still relatively timid about criticising their neighbours, human rights groups increasingly look to the EU as the most credible advocate for their concerns in the international system, according to the Roth’s introduction to the report, “Filling the Leadership Void: Where is the European Union?”.

This year’s report singles out the violence in Darfur – which has now spread beyond Sudan’s borders into Chad and the Central African Republic – as the most pressing human rights crisis of the year. Between 200,000 and 400,000 people, mostly members of African ethnic groups, have died as a result of the violence over the last four years, while another two million have been displaced in Darfur alone.

“Civilians in Darfur are under constant attack and the conflict is spilling across Sudan’s borders,” Roth said. “Yet the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council managed little more than to produce stacks of unimplemented resolutions.”

In his introduction, Roth noted that the Bush administration’s occupation of Iraq and its belated effort to justify the invasion as a humanitarian intervention had made it easier for Sudan to build opposition at the U.N. to proposals to dispatch a peacekeeping force to protect civilians in Darfur from attacks by Khartoum and government-backed militias.

The report also cited the sharp rise in violence – which slid dangerously toward all-out sectarian civil war – in Iraq, as well as the resumption of civil war in Sri Lanka, its persistence in Colombia, the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and last summer’s war between Israel and Hezbollah, as among the most alarming abuses of 2006.

It highlighted as well the persistence of harshly repressive regimes in North Korea, Burma and Uzbekistan and the repression of dissidents in Russia, Egypt, Iran, Ethiopia, and Zimbabwe, among other countries, as major concerns.

HRW also expressed strong disappointment with the United Nations’ new Human Rights Council. Despite hopes that with more stringent membership requirements, it would take a more balanced approach to its work than its predecessor, the U.N. Human Rights Commission, the Council managed in its first year of operation to condemn the rights record of no other country besides Israel.

But not all of the news during 2006 was bleak, according to HRW, which noted that both former Liberian President Charles Taylor and former Chadian President Hissene Habre now face trials on charges of serious human rights abuses as a result of pressure by the African Union (AU).

It also commended the determination of Latin American, Caribbean and some African countries to resist U.S. pressure to sign bilateral accords that would exempt U.S. citizens from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

But these bright spots did not make up both for the continuing decline in Washington’s credibility as a human rights champion and the failure of any other country or group of countries to fill the vacuum, according to the report.

Because of the Bush administration’s abuses – including the use and defence of torture and “disappearances” against terrorist suspects – Washington’s stance now “rings hollow, an enormous loss for the human rights cause,” according to Roth, who also noted that such tactics have proven counter-productive in that they spur terrorist recruitment in communities that identify with the victims.

As for other great powers, China “has often made matters worse,” according to Roth’s essay. “Its burgeoning economy and thirst for natural resources have led it to play a more assertive international role, but it has studiously avoided using that influence to promote human rights.”

Its support for Sudan, Zimbabwe, Angola, Uzbekistan, and Burma – all sources of key commodities – has undermined the cause in some of the world’s most repressive nations, Roth charged.

Russia’s record is similar, according to the report, which deplored in particular Moscow’s continued repression in Chechnya as well as its close ties to “entrenched dictators” in Belarus, the Caucasus and Central Asia.

Meanwhile, democracies in the developing world, some of which like South Africa “could have special moral authority on human rights,” have, with a few exceptions, failed to take consistent, principled positions in international forums or toward neighbours.. “They have yet to show themselves ready to fill the leadership void,” according to Roth.

That leaves the EU which, however, “is nowhere near picking up the leadership mantle,” according to the report, which observed that the group has been notably passive and defeatist at the Human Rights Council.

One of the main obstacles to a more assertive role, according to the report, has been the EU’s requirement that it reach consensus among all 27 members. “It takes only one government with deeply felt parochial interests – Cyprus on Turkey, Germany on Russia, France on Tunisia – to block an effective EU position,” according to Roth.

What he called Berlin’s “new Ostpolitik” toward Russia, for example, has effectively undermined a strong EU human rights position on Moscow-backed dictatorships in Central Asia. Similarly, EU members have been reluctant to make human rights a priority in relations with other great powers, including China and the U.S. itself.