Suchergebnisse

This report presents a comparative analysis of the different understandings and perspectives on human rights, democracy and rule of law in third countries with which EU has established strategic partnerships: China, India, Peru and South Africa. This explorative report focuses on theoretical conceptions of human rights, democracy and rule of law, with limited attention to their operationalization. The eventual aim of Work Package 3, of which this report forms a part, is to provide the EU with conceptualizations of human rights, democracy and the rule of law that take into consideration the diverse conceptions found in third countries and in other international organisations. This comparative study poses a challenge to the reader who is unfamiliar with non-western perspectives on human rights, democracy and rule of law. While South African conceptions appear largely familiar to a European audience, China, India, and Peru present notions and perspectives that are more divergent – compared to those found in the EU. In this sense, this report is meant to challenge some of the reader's assumptions. The report starts with a detailed description of the methodology used (Chapter II). It clarifies the terminology used, and the methods of data collection and analysis. It also discusses the practical and methodological challenges of this comparative study. Chapter III provides a description of the historical, social, and political context of each of the countries under review, in order to more fully understand the development of the domestic conceptions of human rights, democracy and rule of law. Chapter IV is dedicated to the comparative analysis of the domestic conceptions. This chapter is divided into three parts. Human rights conceptualisations are examined in Section A. This sections shows that in the countries under review, the notion of 'human dignity', present in the European conception, is combined with other traditional notions that encourage group understandings of human rights and moderate individualism. This ...

The analysis gives an overview of the key issues, include the latest and most important legal developments at the national level such as case law and legislative amendments, and illustrate and assess the evolution of EU gender equality law.

This report presents five case studies on EU Human Rights Dialogues (HRDs). The case studies concern the HRDs with the African Union, China, India, Morocco and Peru. Building on the findings of the previous reports in Work Package 3 of the FRAME project, the aim of this report is to explore how domestic and organisation-based conceptions of human rights, democracy and rule of law emerge in HRDs and what consequences these conceptions entails for the HRDs' goals. The report starts with a description of the methodology used (Chapter II). Next, Chapter III puts HRDs in context by examining their institutional setting. The Chapter specifically focuses on three key issues: respect for sovereignty and the equality of participants; transparency; and the priorities of the dialogues. Chapter IV is dedicated to the case studies. The Chapter is divided in two parts: the first part focuses on General Human Rights Dialogues and the second on Formal Human Rights Dialogues. General HRD's are Dialogues of a general nature based on regional or bilateral treaties, agreements or conventions or strategic partnerships dealing systematically with the issue of human rights. The first case study in this category concerns India. This is an elaborate study. It fills a gap in the scholarly literature since the EUIndia HRD has so far been little researched. One of the main difficulties that the case study highlights with the HRD is that the EU is conditioned by an essentially Eurocentric world-view about India. The next case study in this first part of the Chapter concerns Peru. The research shows that although the EU's conceptions of human rights differ in some respects from the Peruvian, the Dialogue has been productive. The last case study in the part of General HRD's concerns European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), more specifically Morocco. This too is an elaborate case study which presents a much-needed addition to the academic literature. It details the institutional setting of the dialogue and describes to what extent diverging ...

This report presents an exploration of different conceptualisations of human rights, democracy and the rule of law within international organisations. The report focuses on the United Nations, the African Union, the League of Arab States and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. The eventual aim of Work Package 3, of which this report forms part, is to provide the EU with conceptualizations of human rights, democracy and the rule of law that take into consideration the diverse conceptions found in third countries and in other international organisations. The organisations' original purpose, moment of creation, and structure inevitably influence the development of their human rights, democracy and rule of law conceptions, and their practical engagement with these concepts. For this reason, the attention devoted by each organisation, and also, by specific bodies within them, to one or other conceptual element varies significantly.

Based primarily on legal and policy documents, this chapter outlines the European Union's (EU's) conceptions of human rights. It also identifies major conceptual challenges the EU faces in developing human rights action. Key among these conceptual challenges are the tensions between the EU's economic objectives and upholding human rights, and the difficulty to create a universal and inclusive human rights legal subject. The chapter concludes by identifying opportunities to coin more inclusive and coherent conceptualisations by drawing on the concepts of vulnerability and intersectionality.