Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-04-06-Speech-4-014"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20060406.4.4-014"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the Cotonou Agreement of 2000 had the good intention of giving the ACP countries help from the EU in getting out of the gutter. Even though, today, its continuation is probably a foregone conclusion, there are still a number of things wrong with it, and I shall sum some of them up.
There are still, among the ACP countries, six dictatorships, namely Zimbabwe, Equatorial Guinea, Sudan, Swaziland, Cuba and Eritrea. It is a matter of fact that these countries’ dictators constitute an obstacle to their economic development. The Joint Parliamentary Assembly, and its Political Affairs Committee in particular, must make it a priority to bring real democracy to these countries. At the same time, the ACP countries also include a number of countries in which religious practices still prevail over the rule of law. The humanitarian tragedy in Darfur is a direct consequence of this, among other things. In some of them, women’s rights count for nothing and the mutilation of women – despite what has already been done to counteract it – is still a daily occurrence.
It was the Cotonou Agreement that first acknowledged that corruption was an obstacle to development. It is still going on; it has not yet been stamped out, and constitutes a serious obstacle to the alleviation of the needs of the least well-off in these countries. Let me close by quoting the Indian Nobel economics prizewinner Amartya Sen: ‘never yet has famine occurred in a democratic country’. It follows, then, that, in addition to the principle of ‘aid for trade’, we also have to consider the idea of ‘aid for democracy’."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples