Minister of Foreign Affairs Vesna Pusić about human rights as a part of foreign policy

Dear colleagues from the political arena and from the academic arena,
dear students and researchers,
Thank you so much for inviting me, it's a real pleasure for me to be able to address people who work in all the areas that I consider important and interesting. From academia to politics. From research to implementation of recommendations.

In the late 1980-es, as you all know, there was a big debate whether that was the end of history. A very interesting book based on the experience of Eastern Europe of that time discusses the issue of the end of history. By the phrase - we consider that in the foreseeable or immediate future, everybody would live in the liberal democracy and there would be no great need for ideological debates, conflicts, etc.
In the meantime, this has been proven the myth. But, I believe that one thing - did stay. That is the issue of human rights.

It became obvious that liberal democracy, for the foreseeable future is not going to be a universal political system all over the world in a sense of the functioning of institutions, the rule of law or the other issues associated with liberal democracy.
But under given circumstances, it would be very important to focus on some of the issues that affect human rights regardless of what political system you're living in.  Standard in human rights should not be culture dependent. In other words, torture is torture is torture regardless of which country and under what political system it's happening. Moreover, certain standards should be universal regardless the political circumstances.

The circumstances have also changed in the last less than ten years and atmosphere within the European Union has been changed since the last „Big bang“ enlargement in 2004. Then, the circumstances were very different - Europe was rich and not worried. The key people at that time were people like Adam Michnik and Vaclav Havel and Bronislaw Geremek, people who were primarily known in Europe and around the world as the big champions of human rights. The key figure of today is Mario Draghi – banker.
This means that, to some extent, the issues of human rights need louder voices and more reminding than they did in the early 2000. within the European Union.

Let me condense the human rights policy into three key issues or key areas:
First - countries increasingly profile their foreign policy or legitimize their foreign policy on the attitudes towards human rights. The more attention they pay to human rights, to what extent is the development and humanitarian aid connected to the perception and key issues that they see in the human rights policies.
Second issue or area is military peacekeeping or peacemaking and then peacekeeping missions of different kinds, including the EU peacekeeping mission. I'd say that increasingly they need to be connected and closely related to the civilian projects that goes with it. The peacekeeping missions, and we are also aware a little bit from Croatia's own experience, are essential and very important, when you want to stop fighting, but they are not those who create the sustainable peace. The sustainable peace is a civilian project, related to a large extent to human rights issues, especially because wars of different kinds brutalize society and create the atmosphere in which there is a great change in what people perceive as a horrible. The tolerance for horrible increases and it is the first step in the destruction of human rights standard. So, in order to build the sustainable peace, we have to bring back the awareness of what is unacceptable and what is overstepping any standard that should be tolerated in a society.
And finally, foreign human rights policies; what countries focus on, what they look into, what they invest the development and humanitarian aid into, that reflects itself back onto the country that delivers the aid.

Depending on your human rights policy that are reflected in your foreign policy, you will actually, at the same time, create your own understanding of who you are and where are you going as a society and as a country.

So, it doesn't have always to do with the abroad, with things we do in war affected areas, it has to do also with creating our own identity and our own understanding of ourselves, as societies; what kind of society are we.  And, in that sense, while looking at human rights abuses all over the world, I think that very important for every country, my country included, is to look at ourselves, to look at potential, possible and real human rights abuses in one's own country. I think this is the only thing that gives you real legitimacy in your own society, but probably more important, in your own head. It is real legitimacy to address the human rights issues everywhere else.

I would say that today there is certainly no society, even the ones that we look at as examples, usually Scandinavian societies, that  can say that they have nothing to look at or improve on within their own countries. So, while focusing on human rights issues around the world, we choose who we are, domestically, but also we have to look at the human rights abuses or threats to human rights in our own countries. Widespread discrimination that we sometimes live with, with as sort of self - understood characteristic of our society, or problems we simply have to live with, is something that takes de - learning; they have to de - learn to accept discrimination of any group based on any criteria.

And it's not sort of self - understood automatic process, let me use a little example here from my own country Croatia. In Zagreb, which is the capital of Croatia, we've had great Gay Pride Parade for now eleven years. However in Split, which is the second largest city in Croatia, we've only had the first Gay Pride Parade last year. And it was pretty violent. All kinds of attacks on people who were marching in the Parade and the explanation in the discussion afterwards there were many people who said: Well, what can you do, this is Split, you know how they are, not much can be done, this will always be like that … This year we had the same parade in the same city without one single injure. Five Government ministers were participating in the Parade, with a lot of security present, but, if this is what it takes, this is what should be done.

And people are gradually learning. This created space for many more people from Split who wanted to participate, who wanted to show their positions and who were not afraid this time to support the parade with their own presence. What I wanted to say was - instead of accepting something as part of the inevitable, if you want, a lot can be done. A lot can be done in not only changing those behaviors, but actually changing people’s understandings, changing how people feel about certain things, how approach certain issues, how they approach the issue of non-discrimination and sort of broadening social partnership within the society. So, I’d say that even when something seems, not acceptable, but something seemed so much part of the scene because it has been around for such a long time, there is a way of addressing it, changing it and influence it.

Another type of human rights abuses that I would like to address here is also the human rights abuses related to arm conflict and military intervention. In extreme cases, it creates human rights crises and catastrophes, but in every case it stays on long after the conflict is on. You can resolve the conflict, or the end of conflict, but the deterioration in human rights standards stays long after that. So it requires specific aims for this action in order to change circumstances created by arms conflict. Mrs. Ashton, who is the key person of European Union Foreign Security Policy and focuses very much on the human rights issues, has said that human rights and democracy are at the highest of EU external action. Now we are discussing how to actually implement that and what would that mean on the ground. One of the key and important criteria in identifying how to address and which particular abuses of human rights one should address, is to look at the abuses of human rights which are most acceptable within a society and while we are looking at the EU approaching this, I can say that this is something that Croatia absolutely accept and support.

Something that we would like to emphasize in these circumstances is particularly the right of women and girls, particularly the rights of women and girls in areas and countries, where EU is present with its peacekeeping missions. In these societies the rights of women and girls are the ones that are not only the first to be abused, but also whose abuse is the most acceptable. And you can measure the quality of human rights in general and the protection of human rights in a country in general, by looking at the rights of women and girls.

There is also one additional data that’s important here. In poor and subsistence economies, women reinvest 90% of their earn into the family, whereas the mail income is reinvested 30-40% into the family. So, this is an additional argument for looking into the rights, especially the right to education, the right to labor for women and the right to education for women and girls to look at that as something that is investment, is not only the development of a country, but also in higher standards of human race.

Let me finish this introduction, by saying that - as far as Croatia is concerned, both, on the European level and on the UN level, we will advocate this and I think we’ll find many potential partners in this arguing. We will argue that any form of peacekeeping should be combined with civilian missions. Should be combined with kind of worldwide peace corps that have participants and supporters within the civil service of different countries, but also within the civil society of different country. Peacekeeping, and we can see this example closer to home in our own region, is the temporary thing and can leave you sometimes with inerasable scars if it’s not combined with civilian project that involve and include the civilian population. The capacity of people to understand what their rights are, to stand up for their rights and fight for themselves, for them - other countries can be partners, can be supportive, but are not the ones who are the key advocate. In order for peace to be sustainable, in order for human rights to be sustainable in those countries, they have to find their own advocate, their own legislator within the countries themselves. And only that type of partnership, when you have partners within the civil society of the country and among the legislators of a country for high human rights standards, you can say that the peace mission has been success.

So, one thing that we will advocate and also try to support with our own abilities is peace, as not only the famous absence of war and absence of fighting, but peace - measurable in human rights standards.