FRANCE: Rights Junior Minister Loses Out to Economic Interests

• by Alecia D. McKenzie (paris)
• Wednesday, March 18, 2009
• Inter Press Service

Embattled at home, with President Nicolas Sarkozy indicating that her days in his government are numbered, the 32-year-old Senegalese-born politician must get on with her work despite her uncertain future.

Yade’s boss, Bernard Kouchner, the minister of foreign and European affairs, told a local newspaper last December that 'a nation's foreign policy is constantly in contradiction with the principles of human rights,' and added that it had been a 'mistake' to create Yade’s post, which is under his ministry.

Later, in January, Sarkozy himself publicly slammed Yade, though not by name, for refusing his order to run as a candidate in elections for the European Parliament, which would effectively have taken her out of French national politics.

Yade’s colleague, Justice Minister Rachida Dati, who was the other emblem of diversity in the Sarkozy government, has already received her marching orders and will contest the European elections in June.

With their much-publicised immigrant backgrounds, both Yade and Dati have been high-profile Sarkozy protégés, and although both are now out of the president’s favour, Yade at least seems determined to soldier on for as long as her mandate lasts.

This month has seen her jetting from place to place to fulfill her human rights agenda. On Mar. 2, Yade pleaded before the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva for the decriminalisation of homosexuality. On the following Wednesday, she participated in a meeting on women’s programmes at the U.S. Embassy in Paris.

That Thursday, she travelled to the Rhone-Alpes region as part of her human rights 'Tour de France', and met with a group working to protect children in Haiti. And on Mar. 6, she was off to Monrovia, Liberia, to attend the two-day International Colloquium on Women’s Empowerment, Leadership Development, International Peace and Security, which coincided with International Women’s Day on Mar. 8.

She returned home to face the uproar over Sudan’s expulsion of foreign aid groups, including Medecins Sans Frontieres, from Darfur. Then on Mar. 11, she travelled to Thailand for a 3-day bilateral visit.

Despite the packed schedule, some critics have said that Yade has no power to influence or shape France’s foreign policy and that the country itself has a tarnished image in human rights.

Ambroise Pierre, head of the Africa desk of Reporters Without Borders, said Yade has little authority to affect France’s major foreign policy decisions. 'Rama Yade’s role is almost non-existent when it comes to official diplomacy with Libya, Sudan or China,' Pierre said in an interview with IPS. 'Human rights are very often a secondary issue.'

Still, Yade has made the decriminalisation of homosexuality and the rights of women priorities since she was appointed to the government in May 2007, following Sarkozy’s promise that human rights would be an integral part of France’s foreign policy.

But she has had her work cut out for her. Yade’s attempt to have an impact on human rights violations is complicated by France’s oil interests, according to some observers. French oil companies have operations in Sudan (as well as in Myanmar, among others), so the French government has faced a lack of credibility in its criticism of human rights violations in Darfur, criticisms that are often voiced in vague language.

For instance, France merely urged Sudan to cooperate 'fully and immediately' with the International Criminal Court after the tribunal issued an arrest warrant on Mar. 4 for Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Jean-Marie Fardeau, the head of Human Rights Watch France, has criticised the French government’s 'double standards', but he believes that Yade has tried to make a difference.

'When a country decides to have human rights on its agenda, its important how the whole government behaves, including the president,' Fardeau told IPS. 'We might have expected Yade to be given a greater role on certain issues, but she has done a competent job with what she has been allowed.'

Yade and Kouchner believe they have achieved France’s goals in certain areas of human rights, at least at the level of European diplomacy. France held the six-month rotating presidency of the European Union (EU) in the second half of 2008, and the ministry of foreign affairs says that France 'fostered human rights progress in many areas' including the European Council’s adoption of 'guidelines on violence against women and the fight against all forms of discrimination directed against them.'

These guidelines will serve 'as a road map for the entire European diplomatic network so that the EU can act concretely on the ground on behalf of women,' the ministry stated at the end of France’s presidency.

In addition, there was the declaration launched by Yade and supported by 'countries on all continents calling for the universal decriminalisation of homosexuality, which was pronounced for the first time in the name of 66 nations on Dec. 18 at the UN General Assembly'.

Despite such trumpeted successes, Kouchner, who co-founded Medecins Sans Frontieres in 1971, had to go on the defensive following the publication of a book earlier this year that allegedly revealed his relationship with African dictators and his financial benefits from such links. He said the book was inaccurate, and he received backing from Sarkozy during the scandal. Both men, meanwhile, still seem set on seeing Yade leave.

But Yade appears to have the support of the French public. In February, a poll commissioned by the news magazine Le Point named her the most popular political figure in France, with an approval rating of 60 percent. Fardeau, of Human Rights Watch, says Yade has definitely had an impact on certain issues, including that of violence against women, children’s rights and the rights of homosexuals.

© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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