Dan Banik and Johanne Døhlie Saltnes discuss the application of the human rights clause in the EU’s global development agenda and the impact of applying a human rights-based approach to promote development in specific national contexts.
The European Union is collectively the biggest provider of international aid in the world, contributing over € 50 billion a year to the fight against poverty and the advancement of global development. However, while the EU’s capacities and impact in foreign and security policy have been extensively discussed among scholars and policymakers, its role in promoting global development has attracted less attention. Our guest has focused her research on the contestation of international norms and values, particularly the promotion of human rights norms in the EU’s development policy.In identifying the limits to the EU’s approach, her recent book discusses how standardised policies, particularly in the case of human rights sanctions, may be perceived as neo-colonially intrusive and can come at the cost of recognising the experiences and interests of vulnerable groups and allowing for partner countries’ democratic ownership of their own development trajectory.
Johanne Døhlie Saltnes is a lecturer and collaborating researcher at the Institute for International Relations (IREL) at the University of Brasilia. She was previously a post-doctoral fellow at ARENA, Centre for European Studies, at the University of Oslo. Her book, The European Union and Global Development: A Rights-Based Approach?, was published in 2021 by Routledge. Johanne is the academic editor of ECPR’s political science blog, The Loop. Twitter: @johannesaltnes
Key highlights:
Host:
Professor Dan Banik, University of Oslo, Twitter: @danbanik @GlobalDevPod
https://in-pursuit-of-development.simplecast.com/
Banik Johanne, it's great to see you. Welcome to the show I've been wanting to have you on the show for a long time, but finally you're here and I'm delighted to see you.
Saltnes Thank you so much for having me, Dan. It's a pleasure.
Banik So let's talk about something that interests me quite a lot. I've been working on this issue myself, the Human Rights-Based Approach (HRBA) to development, you've been working on this too and tell us a little bit about where you think the current status of that approach is, is it still being used? Is it still popular? I don't hear much talk about the human rights-based approach to development, so how interesting and how relevant is it today?
Saltnes I think the human rights based approach is relevant for a lot of policymakers out there. I think they have developed a lot of indicators they have a certain schedule that they follow in their policies. For example, when I talk to the EU delegation here in Brasilia, they have a lot of different points that they follow that is their human rights-based approach so, I think it is a relevant concept for policymakers. It is less, perhaps relevant in the more general or wider discussions about development and aid these days. It's a concept that perhaps caught a lot of popularity over a certain time, and now we see more talk about the geopolitical approach, the geostrategic approaches and how different development actors want to be more pragmatic and strategic in their approach and at the same time then the human rights-based approach has perhaps lost a little bit of its relevance.
Banik So let's dive a little bit into what that actually entailed. If I recall, it was law meeting development until the 1990’s, there was considerable work by economists, political scientists, and development scholars on how to achieve development and human rights were seen to be separate. Here in the human rights-based approach it's a merging of the two and the big value added if I recall in the early days, you have Peter Uvin, Asbjørn Eide, and Urban Jonsson at UNICEF talking about the added value as being about not just the final result, that is poverty reduction it is how we achieve poverty reduction, it is the process that was more important than the final result. Can you highlight some of the other features you think were touted as the added value of this approach? Why was this going to make a big difference to development?
Saltnes I think it is exactly what you say. It's not only about the result, but it's also about the process. This was the main goal of the human rights-based approach, so not only should we achieve human rights in our development policies, we should also think about human rights in the process of how we conduct development policies, that was the main added value, as you rightly say. I think for the EU, for example, this approach was a natural starting point for them as their aim and their goal because the EU is a project that is built on human rights. The EU treaties and the EU's evolution and how the EU was built is based on human rights and the respect for democracy. So, for the EU, I think the commitment to a human rights-based approach to development was a natural starting point for them. It's not only about the process, it's also about being the most important goal of how development should occur.
Banik I am often astounded that the EU can actually have a concerted effort on anything on any policy, so let's talk a little bit about the EU as a global development player. What is its vision? You mentioned human rights, but what is it that the EU wants to achieve in terms of global development? I've often wondered, Johanne, how is it possible for the EU to get all of these countries and these foreign policy objectives aligned and condensed into this one uniform policy on global development that is based on human rights principles? Because bringing all of these different countries and actors around the table is surely not easy. How on Earth is the EU able to even harmonise and coordinate all of its policies? So firstly, how do you see the global development agenda as articulated by the EU? What is the vision? What are the goals? What is it that the EU wants to achieve in this domain?
Saltnes So I think you're very right, Dan, it's a difficult exercise to get the 27 Member States to agree on anything and we see that with any type of policy area within the EU. But there are also processes of deliberation among policymakers, they make connections, they make friendships, they also make alliances when they are there and making their policies. This helps them in putting their interests aside and creating these common policies, we know this from research. So, it's easier when you meet on a regular basis to create common policies, and this is how we can explain that the EU is making policies that goes beyond the lowest common denominator, it manages to let some of the Member States put their interests aside at times and create these common policies. We see that in development as well, development is what we call a shared competence, so the EU Member States have competencies, they have their own development policies and then we have the EU, who has its own development policy, which is the common EU development policy. So, there is a balancing act of course, all the time between the EU's development policy and the policies of the Member States and we see that many times when the EU acts, sometimes the EU acts in one way and some of the Member States act in another way, also on development issues. This is a balancing act for the EU and of course it is striving towards having this coherence between the institutions and the Member States, but it's not always possible.
Banik Can you say something about how the EU's foreign policy is coordinated or aligned with its development policy. Is there a close connexion between the two? I'm thinking about how the EU has been championing for a special trade agreement with China and yet there are these concerns among some countries that would not perhaps be the best way to go forward in terms of championing certain human rights principles. So, on the one hand, it seems to me Johanne that the EU could enter into certain foreign policy agreements, which may sometimes come at the cost of some of these other principles especially the human rights principles that it insists. So, what is the linkage between foreign policy and development policy?
Saltnes I think there is a nexus there, but I think this nexus is not particular to the EU, I think this is something that all states encounter in their own policies as well, they have certain principles and norms that they have for their development policy, for example, poverty reduction, human rights, things like this. These principles sometimes collide with the larger ambitions of their foreign policy, and this is the same for the EU and for any state in Europe, and I think especially we see some clashes between trade policies and development policies, so DG trade, trade is an exclusive competence of the EU, so the EU institutions negotiates on behalf of all of the Member States. The Member States do not go into particular agreements with third countries on their own, they only make these agreements with the EU, so the EU has a stronger competence here than in development. DG trade is therefore a more powerful institution if we can put it in that way and they can have more untransparent policies and then negotiate behind closed doors to a larger extent than what you can do in development. So, you have some clashes between the interests of trade and the principles of development policies. The EU's development policy, was grounded in the principles of human rights from the start already back to the first development statement that they had in 1972, there was an ambition on behalf of the EU to contribute to human rights in a more just international order. This was really consolidated in the Maastricht Treaty, which linked development policy to human rights and also in the more recent Lisbon Treaty, where the Charter of Rights was given the legal status. The EU has this ambition of acting as a rights-based development actor, but also when you have this ambition, we need the critical analysis of how the EU fares with regards to that ambition, because it's an ambition that is strong and difficult to be a rights-based development actor. So, we need to take the ambition seriously, we need to believe that there is an ambition there, but then we also need the critical analysis saying or looking at how the EU fairs with regards to this goal.
Banik Help me better understand, Johanne, what does this mean in practise? If the EU has a human rights-based focus in all of its development activity, can you compare and contrast that to the kind of activities that are not focused on human rights? What does it mean on the ground, how does the EU operationalize this? What does this mean for global development policy, applying this human rights lens?
Saltnes For example, the most prominent example we have is this human rights clause that the EU includes in all of its cooperation agreements with third states and this human rights clause says that all of our policies, all of our cooperation agreements, are conditioned on the respect for human rights, democracy and the rule of law so if there are breaches to these principles, the EU has the possibility to cancel the agreement in part or in full. In practise, this means that in a development agreement or in a cooperation agreement that involves aid or development cooperation, the EU is enabled to withhold their aid, so an aid withdrawal or a sanction if there are severe breaches of human rights in the partner country. This human rights clause is particular to the EU and is something that the EU has insisted on since 1991, and this is something we do not see in the same legal manner in the development policies of Member States and other countries, you will see that countries insist on human rights, but you will not have this legal clause that enables the sanctioning of funds.
Banik That is a very good point, because that reminds me of what a lot of my friends two decades ago were saying that one of the big benefits of a human rights-based approach is precisely that legalistic element, the legal aspect that allows the rights claimants to hold the duty bearers to account. In a needs-based approach, something works and that's great poverty is reduced but if it doesn't work, it is more difficult to hold people who didn't do their jobs to account. In a rights-based approach you can take people to court you can take governments to court. In the application of that human rights clause, Johanne, I notice in your work that you've listed some of the cases when that was used, walk us through that because one of the conclusions I see that you found is that it has been relatively easy to use it when it is very clear that something bad is happening, like a coup or in terms of elections that were seen to be rigged. But again, that is a debatable issue the opposition always claims the election is rigged, but it was perhaps more difficult in relation to some other aspects of this human rights, good governance agenda. So, walk us through how the EU is actually applied these clauses in the past few years.
Saltnes Right, yes, you’re very right in what you say there, the clause is what we call Article 96 when there is a human rights breach or a breach of democratic principles, the EU can then go into consultations with the country where the breach is found. What we see when we study the cases is that really the more clear cut cases of breaches of especially democracy and also human rights are the ones that have caused the EU to go into this Article 96 consultations and this is really in the beginning a political dialogue it's not a direct sanction, it's a dialogue where heads of state meet representatives of EU institutions and they have a dialogue about how they can work on the situation and what kind of remedies should be put there to make the situation better. We have seen the use of this clause mainly connected to coup d’état and also to elections, but really the people who have studied the EU's behaviour here, they have very much pointed out that the EU is inconsistent, this has been a very recurrent critique of the EU. The EU is using this clause with some countries but not with others and people use example, you have these relatively similar situations, but the EU only uses the clause in with one country and not the other, and this has caused this quite important critique of the EU being an inconsistent foreign policy actor. Then these critics of the EU, they say that the EU is actually not acting in line with human rights interests, they are acting in line with their economic or security interests. While I think that this is a very important critique, I also show in my book that I think this critique is very overemphasised. I think it's a critique that can explain some cases, but there are many other cases where it's not actually this that is happening. That is when I come into this kind of discussion about other reasons why the EU might act in one way or another. So, there is not only interests in place here, but there might also be other normative concerns that have caused the EU or some of its Member States to use the clause in one case, but not in the other case. I think really the added value I want to do with my study here was to show this picture of the EU, or this over obsession of studying the inconsistencies of the EU might not be as relevant or as interesting as it is presented in the literature at the moment.
Banik If the EU has this human rights clause, the first thing for me would be that, OK, let's understand the conditions under which this clause will be set into motion when will it actually be used, when it will be applied. Is there a checklist of stuff that needs to happen in the partner countries for that clause to be used or not? So, I'm looking at the table that you have compiled I see that in terms of the coups, as you mentioned, it's very clear cut whether it is Niger or Madagascar or Guinea or Mauritania the coups take place often in some of these same countries, and there have been some cases of flawed elections, like in Burundi, in Niger, Togo, Guinea. I don't remember how many years you were studying this, but the human rights situation that led to application of the human rights clause was only in five instances that was Burundi, Guinea, Togo, Zimbabwe and Liberia and something similar also in terms of the rule of law. So, help my listeners and me better understand, Johanne: How does this work? I mean, who actually decides to apply this clause and when? Before we even get to the inconsistency aspect, how does this actually take place? And based on what data, whose data?
Saltnes It's a good question Dan and sometimes it's hard to understand how the EU works. This is decided by the Council, so the Council is the institution, the EU Council, that initiates the clause, and their information comes from their delegations in the countries. Also, discussions with local policy makers and a discussion with the EU, whether in this particular instance of a human rights breach or a breach of democratic principles it makes sense to use the human rights clause. So, it seems to me that policymakers in the EU seem to want to react to this very clear-cut breaches. This is also because opening the human rights clause using Article 96 has been controversial it has gotten a lot of criticism from the partner countries. The EU has been careful in implementing it or using it because they are careful about the criticism that it's also going to create locally.
Banik Because the biggest criticism is that you're preaching, who are you to tell me that human rights are being violated?
Saltnes Yes, exactly. This is the postcolonial critique of the EU or the colonial critique of the EU, you're preaching more than the human rights is not functioning as neutral as standards as it should be, its functioning as a way that Europe or the EU can have the moral superiority and tell partner countries how they should do things. This is a very also common critique of the EU, and also perhaps why this human rights clause has worked less well than what it was intended. The EU hasn't used it since 2015 that was the last case, we will see what the future is for the human rights clause.
Banik For us, for any country or any political organisation, to sanction another country, it is often easier to sanction the pariah states, those everybody criticises, historically, Myanmar you could always say, we're going to sanction because it doesn't really come back to bite you in the back. North Korea another good example, very few countries are against sanctioning North Korea. So, in some of the cases that you've looked at, I was thinking of Zimbabwe, another country that nobody is going to really champion Zimbabwe's case and say that the EU is wrong. Could it be the case Johanne that in some of these very clear-cut cases it is easier, whereas in some others where there are many other foreign policy objectives at stake, that one is more reluctant.
Saltnes Of course, that can be the case, and I think that is the case many times. What I wanted to show is that that is not the only explanation, there are also other normative concerns that come in here that makes the EU or that helps or informs the EU in their choice and the Member States for that sake as well whether they should implement the sanction or not. So foreign policy, other foreign policy objectives of course they play an important role but there also might be other normative concerns.
Banik Such as what?
Saltnes Such as what, for example, if we think about the example of Uganda which I write about in my book. Uganda passed this anti-gay law in 2014, which implied life imprisonment for homosexual activity when they passed this law, there were repercussions from the West. I mean the Netherlands, Denmark, even Norway had quite swift sanctions after Uganda passed this law. There was a lot of development cooperation between European countries and Uganda at that time so this was an easy way for these countries to show to the international community and to the Government of Uganda that this was something that they were not in agreement with, giving a strong signal saying this is a law that we don't support, and we think should be abandoned at once. But then you have other countries like Sweden, like EU institutions, who decided another way did they did not implement the sanction and why is that? Is that because the EU had interest in Uganda, not really from the research that I see from the research that I did, both from Sweden and EU Institutions, what we see is that their concern was that a sanction could actually harm the people on the ground in Uganda. They could be the human rights activists, the people who the law was actually targeting they could actually risk having an even worse situation if the EU or Sweden or any other country implemented the sanction. So, there was a colliding concern on how they should apply human rights in this situation, it's not the question of whether LGBTI human rights is valid or not, it's a question of how this norm of LGBTI human rights should be applied. One way is to give a clear example, another way is to not say anything in public, because that might contribute to an even worse situation for the people that the law is actually targeting. Here we have this example of a colliding normative concerns, it's a normative dilemma, what should they do? It's a damn if you do damn if you don't situation almost. Sanctions might have some bad repercussions, but it also might create that pressure that you want on the local government. If you don't do anything, the aid flows and that aid might contribute to uphold this law that you disagree with, but it also might not harm the activists on the ground. So that is a normative dilemma, and this is not a one off we see this dilemma in many development policies.
Banik That's correct. I was thinking about that Johanne because in many cases, let's say corruption, some countries like Norway have a 0 corruption policy and let's say one discovers that there's been a corrupt act, there's a huge scandal the first instance for the donor the first thought is, let's stop all aid flows, because you need to put an end, you need to punish, you need to make sure that the recipient country and the authorities know that this is not acceptable. By turning off the tap and aid money, you hope to set an example. The flip side of this is this will impact some of the most needy. So even though there were acts of corruption, at least some people were benefiting in terms of the needy, getting some of the benefits of aid and by having that full scale stop of aid, you will be making things worse for some of the worse off people. That dilemma or the trade-off exists but in the case of human rights, Johanne I would say that that also creates a bad precedents in the sense that you then are seen to be inconsistent and your legitimacy or your moral legitimacy is weakened, especially when you have leaders saying, oh, I got away with this. Whereas my colleagues in that other part of the world they were sanctioned, but I'm so important, in fact, if I'm a leader, I may even use this to my benefit to say, look, they dare not criticise me, human rights don't have universal values, we don't accept gay rights, and they gave in. Do you see my point?
Saltnes Absolutely and this is a risk when you put human rights in the forefront of your policy, this is the dilemmas that you will face as a policymaker when you put human rights there as part of your policy. I don't have a solution for the policymakers I'm not saying it's better to do this or better to do that, that's up to them. But what I'm saying is that maybe we should stop focusing more on the strict inconsistency and look more at what is meaningful coherence, to what extent do actors such as the EU or its Member States act in a meaningful, coherent way? These inconsistencies that are justified or that have kind of a reasonable justification, maybe they should count as a meaningful coherence instead of an inconsistency. That doesn't mean we should look away from decisions that are arbitrary or when the EU acts out of its interest because it does, all foreign policy actors are to a certain extent, driven by their interests, and the EU also have a lot of instances, where the interest is driving their foreign policy decisions or the development decisions. On the other hand, we should also take into account these other kinds of commitments and the other kind of evaluations and justifications to get the more nuanced picture of how human rights are implemented as part of a development policy.
Banik So let's think about the Paris principles for aid effectiveness, which is something that most countries have agreed to, at least the donor countries. We're talking about the five principles of ownership, alignment, number three is harmonisation, managing results and mutual accountability. Now all of this is supposed to provide some sort of a coherence that you've just mentioned that all Member States then should agree on. So, while the EU wants to apply the human rights clause say in Uganda, there were other agencies within the EU, perhaps, but also Member States that were not comfortable sanctioning. Then we're talking about two sets of issues here, one has to do with what is ownership and the other has to do with coordination, so walk us through these two principles that maybe are colluding with each other.
Saltnes So ownership is one of the key principles of the Paris Agenda and also donor coordination and the EU has committed to increase the coherency of their donor activities, so the Member States also with EU institutions. But what we see is that when it's difficult to coordinate, it is often because the Member States have the different constituencies, they have their different countries that might be affected differently by public pressure at home. So, LGBTI rights might be more important, or it might be more on the minds of NGO's in the Netherlands than it is in another European country. The government of the Netherlands might have some pressures from their national constituents that they have to cater to, or that they have to listen to that you might not find in other countries. We also see that with the EU, so the EU's constituency is not the same as a national constituency, it's easier for the EU to kind of depoliticize these types of processes and act in accordance with what they think is the best way forward. They have less pressure from the public sphere in Europe, of course they have the European Parliament, which puts pressure on the EU institutions, but the public sphere and these pressures are less strong at the EU level than the national level. This is one important thing that we find and then you have also with regards to ownership, from the Paris Agenda and how these principles really emerged we saw or at least a recent critique has been that the ownership was understood in a very executive way. So, if the partner country, the government of the partner country had owned their own development policy, that was enough for the European donors, there was no talk about broad democratic ownership of policies in that country. It was more understood as if the development country governments own their own policies, then the donors tick off the ownership box. This is also a critique that I propose in my book that the EU is all the much too executive driven when they deal with human rights breaches. When you have these breaches and human rights in partner countries, you have some kind of arbitration, you have a dialogue, you have Article 96 or you have some kind of forum where you will discuss the human rights breach between the EU and the partner country. But the EU here is much too executive driven, for them it's sufficient that representatives of EU institutions talk with representatives of government institutions in the partner country. It's only EU executive institutions that can launch Article 96. For example, civil society cannot request to the EU, now we want Article 96 in this case, so it's always an executive driven decision. This lack of engaging with multiple stakeholders both within the EU but also locally in the partner country creates some kind of executive dominance, and it lacks a broad democratic anchoring of the ownership principle. You can really say we should focus less on the critique of inconsistency, and we should focus more on the real problems of the EU, which is that this executive mode of solving human rights.
Banik I'm thinking you can do a bit of both, Johanne. You could say that they're inconsistent and the reason for this inconsistency is this. Let's take the case of like-minded countries within the EU you would have these groupings of countries, it could be the Nordics, it could be Nordics plus the Netherlands, the Utstein group. Over the years you've had all of these entities being formed and they market themselves as being different from the rest of the gang, they may have higher principles, or they may wish to highlight gender and climate and human rights and gay rights, whatever that makes them different. How does that work within the EU set up, do these countries have influence based on how rich they are or how big they are? Or how do all of these various groupings within the EU interact and then that would obviously have an impact on how human rights and the clauses are applied. So, what is the relative power and influence of all of these like-minded countries and groups?
Saltnes The first explanation here is really that these like-minded countries, the Nordics, UK, Ireland, Germany, Netherlands, they are also the biggest donors. They are the countries in the EU that has the biggest development budgets. They are the countries that have the longest history working on development and the most interested in working in development. This automatically makes their voice more important within the EU. So, Spain and Portugal might be less or Hungary and Poland, they might be less concerned about this type of policy, so they have more resources, they are more concerned about it, and they also have more clearly established values, these what we call the like-minded countries, about how development should be realised. So, this is why they have to a large extent been able to influence the also the EU's development policy, but they took a hit. I would say that the North or the like-minded countries when we had Brexit and when the UK exited the Union because the UK with its DFID, which was their development ministry, was seen as for a long time as kind of the leader.
Banik Very progressive.
Saltnes Exactly. I'm not sure that DFID would be the same if it existed today, now it doesn't exist anymore, but still with Brexit, the EU lost one of its development champions within the EU. We also see we have elections, different policymakers in Sweden, Sweden has just gone away from their feminist approach to foreign policy. We have these changes in many countries, so I would say the like-minded group is not necessarily as strong as it was in in the first two decades of the 2000’s.
Banik I am very concerned about the UK, the aid budget is being slashed and the role of the UK, the idea of global Britain is being watered down. I'm really not sure how the UK is going to move about in this field. You've also noticed how the UK, like France, like Germany, they all want to have these big summits with the African continent, so you have within the EU, forget about the UK, that is not a part of the EU but even within the EU you have bilateralism being pursued by some countries. When Germany has a summit or when France has a summit with the whole of the African continent, they're trying to push certain agendas, which I would imagine often colludes and collides with the EU's overall approach, and that may create sort of friction, right?
Saltnes Yeah, absolutely. We're at the crossroads at the moment, the EU just launched its global gateway, which is their new kind of development policy if we can call it that. It's hard to know where that you will go from here, it's not easy to say where the EU will take its development policy with this global gateway. We know they have more focus on infrastructure they are to a certain extent mirroring China’s Belt and Road Initiative so there are certain elements that are going more in that way they have this geo strategic or geopolitical approach with the new commission. The signals that are coming from the EU at the moment does not really focus on human rights and other types of principles.
Banik There's another problem with the global gateway. I think my listeners are tired of me saying this you may have also heard it in my previous episodes is that the way in which the global gateway like the build back better when the US was formulated the projection was we're doing this to combat the rise of China rather than saying that we are generally interested in promoting infrastructure development in many of these African countries. It was most like, oh, this is the geopolitical situation we've lost the race we want greater ownership of this infrastructure agenda. Going back to the LGBTQ area, I recently saw an overview of the number of African countries where it is still illegal to be gay. What happened to the Uganda story? Are there certain lessons because this is going to reoccur at regular intervals, there'll always be a push in the parliament to legislate against homosexuality. So where does that put some of these EU countries? It puts them in a bind, particularly if you've invested for a long time in development projects and suddenly the Parliament is starting to enact again. So, it's not just Uganda, it's also Malawi, lots of these donor darlings still have not legalised homosexuality.
Saltnes Yes and two weeks ago, the Ugandan Parliament again proposed a new anti-gay law, so it's relevant again in 2023. What has changed since the last time since 2014, is that Museveni the President of Uganda, it's much more critical of the West there is much less development cooperation involved in the relationship between Uganda and the West, and there is much more willingness to outright reject development cooperation from donors on behalf of Uganda. They have always voiced their critique of the West, but now it is even more articulated and they do not want development cooperation as they have received it in the past, they are saying this is a national issue and to stop meddling with our affairs. That's simple and to a certain extent, I also think that the EU and some of the Member States of the EU has picked up on that. I have not seen any reactions from any EU countries or institutions during the last two weeks on this new law or the new proposed law. I think maybe also there is a bit of a learning here on the side of the EU, that sanctions and huge statement of discontent, or of saying we do not agree with this might not always be the most effective way forward. Sometimes there might be things that you can address in political dialogue, and there might be things that you as a donor simply cannot do anything about. So, I think there is a process of learning here also on behalf of the EU and European countries and then sometimes you really just have to be hands off.
Banik But there's also another dilemma here. I think Johanne, and that is that sometimes Member States of the EU, maybe also non-EU countries are so concerned about implementing some sort of a conditionality clause that they are obsessed with that so it becomes a yes or no question, and these are often framed as in this case as promoting human rights. So, the question or the paradox I have is and I'd like you to reflect on is that we may want to be consistent in our application of certain principles, but that may not necessarily promote human rights in some of these countries. So, promoting the human rights of people living in poverty requires a different set of principles that are used by Member States, so sanctions may not necessarily lead to better human rights. There may be something else and I think that is the dilemma that many are struggling with and in Rwanda perhaps is another good case where you have many European countries thinking of Rwanda as the donor darling or Rwanda is considered a donor darling, a lot of things work, the UK is going to send some of its asylum seekers to Rwanda and so in that case, then you say, OK, we're going to overlook maybe some of those other concerns that we have. Any final thoughts you have on this paradox of being the best in class at implementing principles, but also trying to make sure that human rights of the citizens of these countries also improves at the same?
Saltnes Well, you're pointing out the paradox perfectly head on. I mean, you really touched upon what is the central dilemma here and I think the EU is realising that. But I think there's also a few things that the EU can do to better or to make a more meaningful foreign policy with regards to human rights. First of all, they could be more self-reflective, they can be more reflective of what they are struggling with themselves inside of Europe. The problem with LGBTI human rights also in Europe, they can be more self-reflecting, instead of taking this moral superiority kind of position with development or with partner countries, they can reflect on their own faults and their own struggles and see if they can find any resonance there between their own struggles and what is there in the partner countries because the EU is not perfect on human rights either. We have a lot of human rights situation around in European countries that we that we struggle with every day. So, there is one thing, to be more self-reflective, another thing that also I think could help EU lot is the EU could be more reflective about their colonial past, they could be more reflective about the harms they have caused to other countries in the past and take this as a starting point when they talk about human rights with their partner countries. So somehow if they could lose this kind of moral superiority, complex, it comes across like that in many partner countries many times. If the EU could reflect more and be more sensitive and be more willing to discuss also the problems that they have currently at home, but also in the past, I think that would make the EU a more relevant actor for their partners. It would also help to contextualise the discussion on human rights that this is something we do together and something we need to achieve together, and we all have problems, and we all need to work on them to create a better world.
Banik Johanne, it was great fun to see you again and to chat with you. Thank you so much for coming on my program.
Saltnes It was a pleasure Dan, thank you very much for having me.