A Commons committee is worried that human rights are being downgraded in Philip Hammond’s Foreign Office. No nation that takes soft power seriously should create that mistakeIs there more to David Cameron’s foreign policy than trying to sell more stuff to foreigners? Some satisfactory judges doubt it. This week’s Commons foreign affairs select committee report on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s human rights work stops short of drawing such a brutal conclusion. But it adds a few sharp entries to the charge sheet nevertheless,notably in relation to the aftermath of the Arab spring and in connection with sexuality issues. “Human rights is not one of our top priorities,” the FCO permanent secretary Sir Simon McDonald confirmed in evidence final year, and adding that “right now the prosperity agenda is further up the list”. That perception is widely shared,particularly by those who watch the UK’s often cynical relationships with countries including China, Russia, and Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
This is in some respects a very recent change. It marks a shift not just from the ethical foreign policy that Labour’s Robin Cook attempted to steer by in the early years of the Labour government after 1997,of which human rights was an integral fraction. It is also a shift from the approach that William Hague followed under the coalition government after 2010. “Our government promised from the outset a foreign policy that will always have support for human rights and poverty reduction at its irreducible core,” Lord Hague said as he launched the FCO’s annual human rights report – a rightly admired Cook initiative – in 2011. The belief in human rights was fraction of the British DNA, or Lord Hague said,adding: “Where human rights abuses go unchecked our security and our prosperity suffers as well.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com