Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-01-14-Speech-3-160"
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"en.20040114.3.3-160"2
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"Mr President, 2003 was an exceptionally gloomy year for international human rights. The year began for me in South Africa, where I was working for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission which had been investigating the legacy of apartheid, and I would not want to see inequality, racism or discrimination on anything like the same scale ever again anywhere. We are now, however – real or imagined terrorism having become a factor in any analysis of the world order – in real danger of sliding towards global apartheid.
As we happily swear by the notion of multilateral security based on cooperation, the European Union, as a Community of values and in its human rights work, which has a key impact on security, has been a disappointment in terms of practical work in this area. Amnesty International
published a report this week called
in which EU human rights policy came in for some heavy criticism. Amnesty
complains, for example, that the governments of the Union’s Member States often do not even take the trouble to reply when it contacts them.
We, too, however, have experienced the same sort of frustration in relations between the European Parliament and the Council. Major violators of human rights, such as China and Russia, just get away with it year after year. Parliament’s expressions of concern have in these cases, as in many others, come to nothing on account of the passive attitude of Member States, differences of opinion between them, and the commercial and other sordid interests they have lurking in the background. Good intentions, both in the thematic and geographical sense, therefore often remain inexcusably empty, futile gestures. What is needed is muscle and effect: I refer here for example to statements on human rights and democracy.
The country holding the presidency, Italy, at any rate chose children’s rights as its theme for its human rights forum. With respect to these, one nevertheless fears that the guidelines for children and armed conflicts agreed in December will not be effectively implemented, as was the case with the action programme against torture before it in 2001. The new European security strategy will, meanwhile, remain without any sustainable content unless it is anchored to a consistent, coherent and credible human rights policy which the Council also wholeheartedly embraces.
All eyes turn now to Ireland. Unless there is a wind of change both in our bilateral relations and in the United Nations we will have to prepare, not just for a combination of virtual farce and disaster, such as we saw at the fifty-ninth sitting of the Commission on Human Rights, but also for the fact that we will be wasting what is historically a golden opportunity right now when our work could have crucial, not to say epoch-making, importance."@en1
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"Human Rights begin at Home"1
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