I have written before about diplomacy and human rights in my Spanish blog . But I thought I would return to the charge following a recent interesting article by William Hague, the British Foreign Secretary.
Mr Hague’s article was prompted by the devastation caused by the floods in Pakistan, and the generous response of the British people in donating £33m to the charity appeal, on top of the £64m donated officially by the British government. Mr Hague commented that “it is not in our character as a nation to stand by while others are in need, or to be unmoved when they are denied the hard-won freedoms and protections that we enjoy in Britain as a result of centuries of striving for individual rights within a democratic society”.
For me, the key phrase is “hard-won”. Human rights have to be won, and preserved. It is very easy to lose them. Political repression, war, or poverty can all undermine freedoms that, too often, we take for granted. As Mr Hague says, “we all know that these things take a long time time to build and must be constantly nurtured”. People living in Burma, Iran, Somalia, Democratic of Congo or North Korea, to name just a few countries where human rights are least respected, know that to their cost.
My country sometimes gets things wrong. And when we do, we accept well-founded criticism and try to correct our errors. By the same token, as William Hague says, “we will continue to raise human rights concerns wherever they arise, whether with our oldest and staunchest allies, authoritarian regimes or emerging democracies. We will use the persistent and painstaking mobilisation of our resources and of our diplomacy to make progress on this core value of UK foreign policy”. Diplomats are sometimes accused of being cynical. But we are not always so.
› Entries about diplomacy and human rights in my Spanish blog