Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-12-17-Speech-3-300"
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"en.20081217.21.3-300"2
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"Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I am very pleased to represent the French Presidency of the Council of the European Union, and to tell you of the advances that have been made in recent months on the issue of human rights.
And as regards the issues of Darfur, Burma or the food crisis, the Human Rights Council has managed to show that it is responsive, although there is still much to do to strengthen its credibility and its effectiveness.
I am aware that your Committee on Foreign Affairs adopted, at the beginning of December, Mrs Andrikienė’s draft report, which advocates strengthening the Human Rights Council and particularly the role the European Union plays within it. I can assure you that the Council shares this vision.
Similarly, we must remain particularly careful that the Human Rights Council, and other multilateral forums, do not become conceptual Trojan horses that would undermine the universality of human rights. In this way, the European Union, which embarked on the process of monitoring the Durban conference on racism in 2001, will be extremely careful that this process does not lead to texts that have already been negotiated and adopted being revisited, or to concepts, such as the defamation of religions, being recognised, to the detriment of freedom of expression. Please be assured that the European Union will not move on this point.
There is another issue that I would like to raise, which is the fight against impunity. You are aware that this year, we are celebrating the tenth anniversary of the adoption of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. It is therefore important that, in the name of European values, we reaffirm our commitment to the fight against impunity, since there is no peace without justice. That is what the European Union affirms, without hesitation, by offering its political and financial support to international criminal justice, ad hoc tribunals or the International Criminal Court. The European Union has thus conducted awareness-raising campaigns in third countries so that they adhere to the Rome Statute, negotiated the inclusion, in agreements with third countries, of clauses making it compulsory to sign up to the Rome Statute, or adopted declarations reiterating the obligation on the Sudanese Government to cooperate fully with the International Criminal Court.
I would like to finish my speech by raising the issue of the decriminalisation of homosexuality. Tomorrow, I will go to New York to take this draft, backed by many European nations, which calls for the universal decriminalisation of homosexuality.
I would remind you, ladies and gentlemen, that homosexuality remains a crime in 90 countries around the world, and is punishable by the death penalty in six of those. That means that men and women are not able to express their sexual identity freely, without risking prison or being brought before the courts. That is why we can be proud of this initiative which, in the past, Norway had raised in 2006, and tomorrow I will therefore go to New York to represent us in order to finalise this text, and gauge our support in the hope that we will have more than we did two years ago. At that point, we will indeed see whether as many states as possible support this initiative.
Before going on with our debates, I should like to offer my apologies, Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, for arriving late. My plane took off later than scheduled, which is why I was late. I am truly sorry about that, but I feel that the continuation of our debates will enable us to have exchanges that are all the more intense.
Since you pointed it out, I should like to focus specifically on the major role of the guidelines as a guide for the action taken by the European Union on the ground.
While just this year we were celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, it should be remembered that the European Union has specifically mobilised itself and stepped up activities in favour of human rights defenders, whether through action or public declarations. The European Union has also updated its own guidelines on this issue so as to bolster its support of men and women who fight daily so that the universality of human rights can prevail.
In addition to existing issues, this year we have produced draft guidelines on violence and discrimination against women.
I am delighted that MEPs are satisfied with it. These guidelines were adopted by the Council on 8 December. This was one of the priorities of the French Presidency of the Union.
In the same spirit, I would also like to welcome the adoption, by the Council, of new documents on the implementation of Resolutions 1325 and 1820 of the United Nations Security Council, which will enable foreign policy, security policy and defence policy operations to get a firm grip on the problem of sexual violence during armed conflicts, but also to strengthen the active participation of women in rebuilding societies emerging from conflict.
The 2008 report, which was produced by the Union and which mentions the action taken by the European Union and its successes, also concerns the fight against the death penalty. Thus, a resolution that was transregional, but submitted on the initiative of the European Union, calling for the implementation of a universal moratorium on the death penalty, was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in December 2007. This success has also just been extended by the adoption, with a comfortable majority, of a new resolution that essentially follows up on the same issue, at the 63rd session of the General Assembly, which is taking place at the moment.
The European Union is also conducting around 30 dialogues and consultations on human rights with third countries, including China, central Asian countries and the African Union, and new dialogues have been initiated in the last six months.
The Union’s report also sets out the particularly active role of the European Union in the competent international forums on human rights, that is to say, in the Third Committee of the United Nations General Assembly or the Human Rights Council."@en1
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