Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-06-06-Speech-3-120"
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"en.20070606.14.3-120"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I regard the Human Rights Council as a body in its infancy that is still experiencing certain growing pains. It is not easy for the European Union to achieve any real progress in asserting our human-rights standards in the UN framework today. Why? Because we have few permanent allies. The support we receive usually comes from Canada, Switzerland, Norway, the countries applying for EU membership and individual countries covered by our neighbourhood policy, to name a few of the main sources. This list is not exhaustive, but we are often faced with a united front of G77 countries, and we can rarely achieve anything if a confrontational approach is adopted.
We must draw our own conclusions from this. Where does the problem lie? What can we do? We could, for example, strengthen the Special Rapporteur, support the High Commissioner for Human Rights and introduce universal reviews, but we could also condemn the most serious cases and denounce the most flagrant violations. In other words, in specific instances we must continue to do some very plain talking on behalf of the victims of abuses.
I often wish we could respond and react more quickly to developments. From the very beginning, for example, I have been calling for a kind of warning mechanism. I very much hope that we can move gradually in that direction. In the longer term, however, the achievement of the aims of the Human Rights Council will depend on the establishment of a new approach to human rights within the United Nations.
The transition to this new approach, indeed, was at the heart of the resolution on the creation of the new Council. The resolution states that the work of the Council ‘shall be guided by the principles of universality, impartiality, objectivity and non-selectivity, constructive international dialogue and cooperation’. We must also be aware, of course, that there will never be an apolitical UN forum. It therefore goes without saying that we must not only promote our values but also defend all of our interests."@en1
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