Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-07-06-Speech-3-480-000"
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"en.20110706.24.3-480-000"2
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"Madam President, can I begin by thanking Véronique De Keyser very much for her work. In her report, she says human rights must be central to all EU policies. I agree so much with that. I should also like to put on record my thanks to Heidi Hautala, who has now gone off to a new job but who did such a fantastic job as Chair of the Subcommittee on Human Rights.
Sometimes we have to be bold, and I think that is essential in terms of how we now approach the report and take this work forward. I believe that we have to choose stability and democracy; I believe that we need to be creative in our response to these rapidly evolving challenges. No simple task to deliver, but I think this contribution enriches our debate and helps us move towards achieving it.
The report is very important. It is a great commentary on what we were able to do in terms of foreign policy and democracy, but it also enables us to consider the responsibilities we have to ensure that people in all countries benefit from the same rights as us. We cannot take those rights for granted. While, of course, the Middle East and North Africa are in the spotlight, we know that in Belarus, President Lukashenko continues to suppress any form of opposition, and that is why we led a cross-regional initiative to record our condemnation of Belarus at the June meeting of the UN Human Rights Council. The resolution was adopted by an overwhelming majority.
I raise that example to show that this policy of engagement, a policy where we work with the people on the ground but are clear in our stance against regimes, is very important. At the UN, we were very active last year, not least because of the review of the UN Human Rights Council. We had some real successes in Geneva, including the renewal of the mandates of various UN Special Rapporteurs – on Burma, DPRK, Sudan, Somalia, Cambodia and Haiti – and resolutions on the DRC, Guinea, Kurdistan and freedom of religion, a very important issue that is often raised in this Chamber.
We also reached all our objectives at the Third Committee of the General Assembly in New York. The resolution in favour of a moratorium on the death penalty was passed with great support, and a resolution against religious intolerance was adopted by consensus.
We celebrated, too, in 2010 the tenth anniversary of Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security, and we adopted a set of indicators to monitor our progress on it.
All these are examples of what can be achieved when the EU speaks as one. The fact that we speak at the UN as one now offers even greater potential.
It is right, too, that we review our policies to ensure, as Ms De Keyser says, that ‘values, consistency and a genuine culture of results’ are absolutely at the heart of them.
The report goes on to stress the need to develop further the political dimension of our work, to match what we do on development. We have a good basis for doing that, though I am sure it will not be easy. These strands were brought together in the policy of ‘democracy support’ set out in our Council Conclusions of November 2009. We went on to designate 12 countries for pilot implementation of our ‘Agenda for Action’.
So, too, when we think about the idea of a ‘European Endowment for Democracy’, for me the capacity to help young people, in particular, to join that democratic dialogue by using new technology, will play an important part in advancing that process."@en1
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