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New report reveals massive decline in European power at the UN

New report reveals massive decline in European power at the UN

For immediate release

17 September, 2008 – The European Union’s leverage to promote human rights values and its vision of a rules-based world order has dramatically declined over the last decade. This is the main finding of a new report by Richard Gowan and Franziska Brantner MEP, published today by the European Council on Foreign Relations. 

Since the late 1990s, the EU has lost the regular support of 41 former allies on human rights votes, joining the United States in the group of leading world powers whose influence through the UN is in decline. In the later 1990s, EU positions on human rights were backed by over 70% of votes cast at the UN General Assembly. In the last two years, the level of support has fallen to around 50%.

The trend in support for Chinese and Russian positions in the same votes has been almost the exact opposite, leaping from around 50% ten years ago to 74% (China) and 76% (Russia) in the last General Assembly session. This reflects not only their outspoken commitment to sovereignty, but their diplomatic skill in playing the UN system.
 
“This paradox has come to the fore in 2008 as the EU has tried to work through the UN on Burma and Zimbabwe, yet been unable to get Security Council resolutions for action. These defeats come on top of previous setbacks for the EU at the UN in cases from Kosovo to Darfur,” the report’s authors, Richard Gowan and Franziska Brantner, point out.

 “This is partially due to geopolitical shifts. But the EU has also been the architect of its own misfortune,” the report says. “Europe has lost ground because of a reluctance to use its leverage, and a tendency to look inwards – with 1,000 coordination meetings in New York alone each year – rather than talk to others. It is also weakened by a failure to address flaws in its reputation as a leader on human rights and multilateralism.”

The EU’s decline at the UN is apparent in three key fora: the General Assembly, the Human Rights Council, and the Security Council.

Key figures

• In the 1990s, the EU enjoyed the support of up to 72% of the UN membership on human rights issues in the General Assembly. In the last two Assembly sessions, the comparable percentages have been 48 and 55%. The trend away from the Europeans is markedly worse on the new Human Rights Council (HRC) where EU positions have been defeated in over half the votes.
• The US has suffered an even greater collapse than the EU; its “voting coincidence” on human rights at the General Assembly has dropped from 77% to 30% during the last decade. The decline of the “West” is overshadowed by a leap in support for Chinese positions in the same votes from under 50% in the later 1990s to 74% in 2007-8. Russia has enjoyed a comparable leap in support.
• In the UN General Assembly, the EU and its permanent allies (or “Wider Europe”) make up only 23% of UN members (44 countries). The report identifies three further groups of countries - the “Liberal Internationalists” (44 countries which vote with the EU on human rights issues more than half the time); the “Swing Voters” (85 countries which vote with the EU between 36% and 50% of the time); and the “Axis of Sovereignty” (the 19 most hostile countries to EU positions, including China and Russia).

“The United Nations has been at the heart of the EU’s vision of effective multilateralism but the EU has collectively failed to adapt to new power trends and to build effective coalitions,” says Martti Ahtisaari, former President of Finland and one of ECFR’s co-chairs. “If it wants to retain its influence around the world, the EU will have no choice but to develop new ways of winning votes.”

Policy recommendations

The EU must develop a new strategy for its engagement through the UN. It should try to recover its collective influence by improving the internal analysis of its performance at the UN, and by building broad, shifting coalitions that are capable of isolating the hard-line minority of countries which resist all attempts to impose limits on national sovereignty.

“The EU needs to define a new approach to human rights that will restore its reputation as a leader in the field, and develop a new political narrative that involves both creating widespread momentum for new rights initiatives and protecting established principles against the UN’s sovereignty hawks,” the report says.

1. Create greater mutual transparency – The EU should aim to make both the UN and the EU more transparent. It should produce an annual report on human rights at the UN, appoint EU-UN human rights envoys, and set up a new, Independent Fund for NGO-UN initiatives to increase NGO scrutiny of the UN. EU governments should lead by example in welcoming debate about European human rights issues at the UN and in bilateral negotiations.

2. Improve coordination – To expand its coalitions of allies, the EU should build on the French and British strategy of working through the Francophonie and the Commonwealth. Using the provisions of the Cotonou Agreement, it should also form a “Cotonou group” of African, Caribbean and Pacific states in New York and Geneva focusing on human rights. The EU should work with moderate Muslim countries such as Jordan and Senegal to weaken the influence of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC).

3. Defend core principles – The EU should engage on a new generation of human rights resolutions – on issues like immigrant rights, union rights and globalization – with “lead-up” processes that engage at an early stage with the widest possible range of developing countries, as well as civil society actors. The EU should highlight its commitment to fulfilling the Responsibility to Protect by conducting advance discussions on the tactics and sanctions available to the EU to defend the principle in cases where it is obstructed in the Security Council.

Link to full report: http://ecfr.eu/page/-/documents/UN-report.pdf

NOTES TO EDITORS

1. The report entitled “A global force for human rights? An audit of European power at the UN” was written by Richard Gowan and Franziska Brantner for the European Council on Foreign Relations.
2. This report, like all ECFR publications, represents the views of its authors, not the collective position of ECFR or its Council Members.
3. Richard Gowan can be reached for comment at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or +4420 7031 1613. Franziska Brantner can be reached at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), or + 49 174 138 4917. ECFR fellow Anthony Dworkin is also available to comment on contents of the report (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), or +4478 7963 6701).
4. Launched in October 2007, the European Council on Foreign Relations is a pan-European think tank and advocacy group, co-chaired by Martti Ahtisaari, Joschka Fischer and Mabel van Oranje.