The EU’s Human Rights Promotion in China and Myanmar: Trading Rights for Might? EU Diplomacy Paper No. 5, October 2014
This paper aims to answer two questions: generally, to what extent the human rights promotion of the European Union (EU) in third countries is consistent, and more specifically, why the EU’s approach towards human rights promotion in China and Myanmar differs despite similar breaches of human rights. It compares the EU’s approach to the two countries over two time periods in the late 1980s and 1990s in the context of the EU’s evolving human rights promotion. Based on the two case studies, this paper finds that the EU’s human rights promotion in third countries varies significantly. Whereas one would expect the EU’s approach to become increasingly assertive throughout the 1990s, this has only been the case with Myanmar. China’s economic and political importance to the EU appears to have counterweighed the general rise in European attention to third countries’ human rights records. In other words, this paper finds that commercial interests take precedence over human rights concerns in case of important trading partners.
Burma and ASEAN: A Marriage of Inconvenience
AbstractThough Burma joined ASEAN with high hopes in 1997, the union has been a mutually disappointing one. Burma has not enjoyed the influx of FDI and general economic windfall it expected from joining, and ASEAN has been repeatedly embarrassed by SPDC human rights abuses. Yet there have also been benefits: the junta was inspired to release Aung San Suu Kyi (at least for a while) and to set forth the 7-step “roadmap” to constitutional government, while ASEAN became a more comprehensive regional organization and has augmented its diplomatic toolkit to deal with intransigently dissident members. How this uneasy relationship fares amid the 2010 elections remains to be seen.
The Better Peoples of the United Nations? Europe’s Practice and the United Nations
Are the Europeans indeed, as they think, the 'better peoples' of the United Nations? In this article, the author takes a closer look at this flattering European self-image by selecting a few issues of the general theme of 'Europe's practice and the UN'. Having recalled, in Section 2, Europe's marginal role in the foundation of the UN at the end of World War II, and the fragmented existence of Europe in the Organization in the long period of the Cold War (Section 3), the article turns to its central subject - Europe's compliance with the rules of the UN Charter. Here, in Section 4, matters which the author considers particularly important or characteristic are singled out, among them the prohibition of the use of force, the obligation of states to settle their disputes by peaceful means, the protection of human rights, and decolonization and economic cooperation with developing countries. In Section 5, the article reflects on the efforts of the EU Member States to coordinate their foreign and security policies with regard to, and in, the United Nations. In the sixth and last section, it seeks to explore the future place and role of Europe in the UN. In his conclusion, the author suggests that Europe has no choice but to remain loyal to the idea of a multilateral international system based on the fundamental rules of the UN Charter. Intellectually and conceptually, the EU and the UN are built on the same foundations, so that a failure of multilateralism on the global level would necessarily have negative repercussions on the European project.