10/25/2016

TheGuardianviewonhumanrightsandforeignpolicy:dotherightthing,nottheeasyone|Editorial|Opinion|TheGuardian

The Guardian view on human rights and foreign

policy: do the right thing, not the easy one
Editorial
A Commons committee is worried that human rights are being downgraded in Philip Hammonds Foreign
Ofce. No nation that takes soft power seriously should make that mistake
Tuesday 5 April 2016 19.58BST

s there more to David Camerons foreign policy than trying to sell more stu to foreigners?
Some good judges doubt it. This weeks Commons foreign aairs select committee report on
the Foreign and Commonwealth Oces 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 SirSimon McDonald
conrmed in evidence last year, adding that right now the prosperity agenda is further up the
list. That perception is widely shared, especially by those who watch the UKs often cynical
relationships with countries including China, Russia, 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 Labours Robin Cook attempted to steer by in the early years of the Labour
government after 1997, of which human rights was an integral part. 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 FCOs
annual human rights report a rightly admired Cook initiative in 2011. The belief in human
rights was part of the British DNA, Lord Hague said, adding: Where human rights abuses go
unchecked our security and our prosperity suers as well.
These concerns do not seem to be so obvious a part of Philip Hammonds DNA. Mr Hammond has
dismantled the very specic human rights objectives including freedom of expression, torture
prevention, death penalty abolition and womens rights that he inherited from Lord Hague. In
their place, the FCOs new focus is more general democratic values and the rule of law,
stengthening the rules-based international order and human rights for a stable world.
Defenders say the new focus allows a broader set of issues to be pursued. Critics charge that it lets
diplomats o the hook on things that must not be fudged. The apparent downgrading of the
annual human rights report, the decision to halve the number of interim updates, and the lack of
meaningful human rights evaluation have all been justied on cost-saving grounds. But they
point towards a general downgrading that canonly set alarm bells ringing.
It would be facile to claim that all aspects offoreign policy are ethically straightforward.
Democrats must talk to dictators and exporters must sell appropriate goods to oppressive states.
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10/25/2016

TheGuardianviewonhumanrightsandforeignpolicy:dotherightthing,nottheeasyone|Editorial|Opinion|TheGuardian

It would be equally misleading to suggest that UK foreign policy has lost all ethical compass when
there still is much good and productive human rights work, often at a micro level, being carried
out by both the FCO as well as by DfID, whose budget has waxed as the FCOs has waned. The
doubling of the FCOs Magna Carta fund for human rights is one aspect of that.
But there can also be little doubt that some of the cuts that have been imposed on the FCO have
helped to shift policy priorities away from human rights. That approach has been particularly well
documented in relations with China, where the drive for Chinese inward investment has been
allowed to swamp every other consideration, including Hong Kong rights. But it also riddles every
aspect of the British relationship with Saudi Arabia too, while the facts and implications for UKRussian relations of the Litvinenko case were strenuously ignored by Whitehall until Russias
occupation of Crimea and its actions elsewhere in Ukraine made the business as usual policy
unsustainable. As the committee rightly said this week, the FCOs failure to designate Egypt or
Bahrain as countries where human rights are priority concerns is sadly in line with that tradition.
No nation that thinks soft power is important, as Britain rightly does, can aord the current
perception, which is based in fact, that the UK talks up human rights and the rule of law while
trading with and arming oppressors who ignore them. The answer is not, as the government
seems to think, to downgrade human rights, a policy that is rst cousin to looking in the other
direction while the super-rich park their wealth and assets in UK oshore tax havens. The answer
is the same in both cases. It is to try as hard as possible to do the right thing ethically even, or
especially, when the cost is high.
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