Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-02-24-Speech-3-103"
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"en.20100224.14.3-103"2
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"Mr President, the European Union is preparing, in Geneva, in Brussels and in the capitals of third countries, for the first session of this year of the Human Rights Council.
This is going to be a crucial year for the negotiations on the review of the Council’s work, which is going to take place specifically in 2011.
The European Union is beginning to work on, but intends to consolidate, a clear position, a clear strategy for the Union so that we can maintain an active role and a commitment to the protection of and respect for human rights.
In any case, it is clear that the European Union is going to continue to advocate the independence of the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, as it always has done, along with the independence of special procedures, the participation of non-governmental organisations in the Human Rights Council, the capacity of the Council to tackle key serious human rights violations, and the establishment of country mandates.
Spain, and the Spanish Presidency, are aware that it has taken over the rotating Presidency at a crucial time for the Union and for the United Nations in terms of protecting and promoting human rights in the world.
The Treaty of Lisbon has also opened up a new phase, as it has in so many other areas, in terms of the Union’s external action, and we hope that our joint work, under the leadership of the High Representative, will therefore make the European Union’s voice clearer in defending the fundamental principles of the work of the Human Rights Council. We also hope that this phase of moving towards a more active, transparent and efficient Council benefits from the transitional phase that the Union is going through under a Presidency – which I currently represent – which will do everything in its power to ensure that the paths taken by the Union and by the Council from now on lead to the same goal, which is the promotion and protection of human rights in the world.
The Human Rights Council is a forum for debating the human rights situation in all the regions of the world, and the efforts of the international community to improve the human rights situation, which is one of the principles, one of the elements, one of the essential characteristics of the spirit of the European Union, the thing that gives it its true identity in the world.
The Presidency of the Council has taken the role that it has to play at this time very seriously. It has taken the challenges that the European Union has to tackle during these sessions of the Human Rights Council very seriously. Proof of this is that the First Deputy Prime Minster of the Spanish Government, María Teresa Fernández de la Vega – in this case acting as the representative of the Presidency of the Council of the European Union – will be attending the ‘High-level segment’, which is going to begin the Council’s 13th session.
The Presidency is therefore going to have an active presence in the work of the Council.
We will defend the European Union’s positions on matters with special implications for numerous Member States and, in addition to the national initiatives, the European Union is going to table country resolutions.
We continue to believe that the Council needs to have instruments in order to defend human rights, in order to respond to situations of serious human rights violations, either through a specific country mandate – which is the case of Burma or the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea – or through mandates on specific subjects within a country, as we hope will be the case for the Democratic Republic of Congo.
These situations need to be monitored by the international community and by the Human Rights Council if we want the Council to maintain its credibility.
One of the items that are going to be on the agenda for the Council’s forthcoming sessions is something that we are going to discuss later, in another item this afternoon, which is the special sessions on Gaza and the Goldstone report. The European Union considers – as we will say once again later – that this report is a reliable analysis, and the European Union stressed the importance of conducting adequate, reliable research into the possible violations of international human rights legislation and international humanitarian law.
Finally, I would like to discuss the problem of the Council Review."@en1
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