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The EU and Human Rights at the UN - 2009 Annual Review
September 10, 2009 2:29 PM
The European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) has produced a new memo "The EU and Human Rights at the UN - 2009 Annual Review" by ECFR Policy Fellow Richard Gowan and Franziska Brantner MEP. They say that as world leaders gather in New York for the opening of the UN General Assembly next week, Richard Gowan and Franziska Brantner MEP warn that the EU is losing its ability to push the UN to respond to humanitarian crises. Earlier this year, the EU was repeatedly thwarted in its efforts to use the UN to pressure the Sri Lankan government to allow humanitarian aid in during its assault on Tamil areas, which led to tens of thousands of civilian casualties. China and Russia blocked EU attempts to force Colombo's hand in the Security Council, and the EU found itself outmaneuvered and outvoted in the Human Rights Council.
The memo - the authors' follow-up to their report last year on the EU's performance in human rights debates at the UN - also reveals that the number of states most fiercely opposed to the EU's human rights positions at the UN has swollen to 40 this year from 19 last year. Since the late 1990s when the EU enjoyed the support of over 70% of the UN General Assembly in human rights votes, support of the EU's human rights position has haemorrhaged: the EU has lost the backing of 13 former allies on human rights votes in the last year - 117 of the UN's 192 members now typically vote against the EU.
ECFR argues that while the Obama administration's decision to re-engage with the UN following the obstructionism of the previous administration has generated a new spirit of optimism, EU governments have failed to capitalise on this new mood and are increasingly allowing their opponents to set the agenda and dominate human rights debates and effectively endorse human rights abuses.
The paper is the first of a series of annual updates mapping the EU's performance in human rights debates at the UN, based on the authors' groundbreaking Audit of European Power at the UN published in September 2008, which revealed a massive decline in European power at the UN over 10 years.
Link to full memo: http://ecfr.eu/page/-/documents/ecfr_2009_un_annual_review.pdf
European Council on Foreign Relations - www.ecfr.eu
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