Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-02-14-Speech-2-037"
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"en.20060214.4.2-037"2
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".
Mr President, this has been a very valuable discussion on the human rights clause and on human rights and democracy in general.
Let us not forget that human rights issues are already being raised systematically with partners in political dialogues. We have established dedicated human rights dialogue and consultations with certain countries, and human rights subcommittees have also been established. In other cases, human rights may be raised at association councils and at association committee meetings.
The purpose of the human rights clause is not simply to make it possible to impose sanctions, but also to create a basis for human rights dialogue and for the setting-up of institutions concerned with it, because we need to give such institutions a chance and encourage them to develop. Institution building is as important as the clause, and the existence of the human rights clause in the association agreement, or in partnership and cooperation agreements, creates the basis for this. Therefore there is no need to replicate this in sectoral agreements.
I also want to recall that our agreements have a wide range of policy goals. We want to contribute to stability and to the increase of welfare for all the populations concerned. It is not a lack of courage if we do not always have the same human rights clause or if we do not apply sanctions. We also have to contribute to the development of a population – look at the African, and some Asian, populations, as some of you mentioned. There is also freedom from want and freedom from fear, which are closely related to human rights and to the human security concept. That means we cannot throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are many other clauses to defend, such as the clause against terrorism, the clause against weapons of mass destruction and the clause for democracy. It is all interlinked and we cannot focus only on human rights; we have to see the whole picture, which includes poverty eradication. This is the difficult balance that we have to strike sometimes.
It is not easy to harmonise this clause, because we are negotiating with every partner and we have to find solutions in the end. Not every partner accepts exactly the same wording. However, it is not so much about wording but about application and the way we can encourage the partners to come up with their own solutions, because, as we have always made clear, we do not want to impose everything on the others: we want to encourage their societies to build and to change.
As I have already said, institution building is just as important, as are legal, judicial and police reform, because that is where human rights are applied.
Finally, I should like to say that, with all due respect, in many individual cases we have been able to get people out of prison and to talk about them. We speak about the death penalty with each and every partner, we speak against torture, and slowly these things come through. Maybe sometimes the issue is speed – not everything is being done at the same time. But let us be realistic: we cannot change the world in a day."@en1
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