Global Campus Working Papers

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https://reponew.gchumanrights.org/handle/20.500.11825/485

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Browsing Global Campus Working Papers by Subject "European Union"
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    The absence of EU funding for Syrian civil society groups in exile: A missed opportunity or a sensible approach?
    (Global Campus, 2017) Welander, Marta
    As a leading donor of the international refugee response, having mobilised over 9 billion euros since the start of the conflict towards humanitarian and development assistance, the European Union has contributed greatly to a number of large-scale efforts aimed at addressing the crisis in a relatively holistic manner. On 26 April 2016, the European Commission released a communication entitled ‘Lives in Dignity: from Aid-dependence to Self-reliance’, in which it emphasises the importance of aid activities and programmes which engage displaced people themselves. The communication states that “[a] new, coherent and collaborative policy framework needs to be put in place harness[ing] the productive capacities of refugees and IDPs.” Accordingly, any new approach ought to ensure greater cooperation between donors, civil society and displaced people themselves because the effectiveness of development action “depend[s] heavily on the extent of ‘buy-in’ from the host communities and the displaced people themselves.” In this context, an obvious ‘low-hanging fruit’ that lends itself very well to the EU’s objectives of harnessing the capacities of refugees would be the funding allocated to civil society initiatives launched and led by refugees themselves in exile. Logically, by supporting such initiatives, funding endeavours of the European Union would not only be contributing to current aid initiatives but would also help strengthen the emergence of a Syrian civil society which would later on have the potential of continuing its activity in post-war Syria. This paper aims to assess whether the European Union currently has the capacity to enact the aforementioned policy framework by funding the Syrian civil society in exile. The paper focuses in particular on the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR) and its potential support to the Syrian civil society emerging in Lebanon. The paper starts by providing an overview of the European Union’s funding towards addressing the ‘refugee crisis’ to-date, highlighting the limitations of these instruments in supporting smaller size local actors. In the second section, the paper assesses the importance of local actors, with a specific focus on Syrian-led civil society initiatives operating in Lebanon. The contribution of Syrian-led groups addressing the ‘refugee crisis’ is then explored, and it is argued that these groups are able to go beyond short-term “provision of food, medicine and blankets”, as they also have the potential of building trust and strengthened relations between people from different parts of society. It is suggested that such efforts therefore have the potential to help re-build the foundations of civil society in anticipation of ceasefire and a political solution to the Syrian civil war. The third section of the paper establishes that EU funding for Syrian-led initiatives is lacking, and identifies a number of key challenges and risks which a funding body may face when looking to support such groups. Importantly, in the fourth section, the paper focuses on the scope for evolving practice, proposing some relevant ‘next steps’ which would allow the EU to support a civil society in exile. It is argued that there is, first and foremost, an urgent need for increased understanding of the phenomenon, combined with the need to address a number of specific considerations to render funding mechanisms accessible to the exiled civil society. The paper concludes by recommending that the EU – as a leading donor in response to the Syrian crisis – starts exploring ways to tap into the potential of the Syrian civil society, in order to seize a unique, two-fold opportunity readily available.
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    Applying rights based approach (RBA) to development within the EU development cooperation : reality or rhetoric? A case study of Nepal
    (Global Campus, 2017) Bhandari, Shiva Datta
    Ensuring full respect of human rights is one of the key features of the EU development cooperation. It is expressed either as a targeted human rights programme/project or as a cross cutting aspect of the development cooperation. In 2012 the EU adopted Rights-Based Approach to Development (RBAD) that all institutions including the EU Delegations are obliged to apply in each process of the development cooperation. As there has not been any review done by the EU, this paper assesses the EU policies, approaches and institutional readiness for the RBAD application from two aspects. First, the political rationale of the RBAD in development cooperation and their reflection in binding EU documents; and second, application of those binding provisions and the underlying challenges in terms of their full application. More specifically, the paper focuses on the RBAD as a new approach to the EU Development Cooperation and the situation or the potentiality of their application within the EU Delegations. The EU Toolbox developed in April 2014 (Commission staff working document, which aims at integrating human rights principles into EU operational activities for development) is referred to in detail to assess the full application of the RBAD in EU development cooperation. The political preference of this fairly new approach of the EU development policy expects a synchronisation of the human rights principles and norms in all development cooperation activities both at the HQs and in the field. However, this paper concludes that the application of the RBAD is not yet the case in each process of the EU development cooperation, which is largely due to the intra-institutional and external challenges. This paper briefly presents the major challenges identified and the potential measures required for full application of the RBAD principles within EU development cooperation.
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    Male victims of sexual violence in the European Union: an analysis of the EU’s actions combating sexual violence
    (Global Campus, 2017) Csokán, Babett
    Sexual violence is a serious human rights violation. The main target groups are women and children but considerable amount of men also experience sexual violence. However, boys’ and men’s sexual victimisation ‘remains poorly documented.’ Due to the disproportion in the statistics, men are often neglected as possible victims of sexual violence and thus sexual violence against men is under-researched. However, sexual violence cannot be seen as a ‘gender and sex neutral’ phenomenon. The question arises as to how the gender of the victims and perpetrators should be framed in the policies and laws; in short, whether gender-specific or gender-neutral language is more adequate. The European Union combats sexual violence through various measures such as directives, programmes, and strategies. However, according to the author’s knowledge no analysis has been conducted yet to see whether the EU acknowledges sexual violence against men in its policies and programmes. This working paper aims to address this question. The EU’s legislative competences in the different policy areas are clarified in the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. According to the document, there are three levels of competencies: exclusive competences, shared competences, and supporting competences. In order to adequately discuss the EU’s activities regarding combating sexual violence, in Chapter 2.2 the question addresses to what extent the EU has its competence to act in the field of sexual violence. In this way it can be evaluated to what extent the EU uses and stretches its competences. After analysing the question of EU competences, the main research question of the paper is to be answered: To what extent do EU policies acknowledge men and boys as possible victims of sexual violence? In answering this question the research aims to shed some light on the question of whether men and boys face discrimination on the grounds of sex in the context of sexual violence. The research focuses on the internal EU actions.
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    Tackling coherence and consistency in the EU's external human rights policy
    (Global Campus, 2017) Taufar, Patrik
    The current discourse in the field of the external human rights policy of the European Union (EU) is strongly oriented toward the so-called “challenge of (in)coherence” . This is visible in academic as well as in policy-making outputs. In this context, the largest academic project on the EU and Human Rights of the past years, the FP7 Frame project aiming at ´Fostering Human Rights among EU (internal and external) policies´, identified coherence as one of three major cross-cutting challenges for the fulfilment of the EU´s strong commitment to compliance with, and promotion of human rights standards. It is remarkable that the challenge of (in)coherence has been identified primarily as the result of technical obstacles at the side of the EU´s institutional system. Firstly, incoherence occurs because “institutional structures and mandates in the EU are notoriously complicated and do not allow for efficient coordination.” The second reason for the incoherence of the EU’s human rights policy is supposedly the fact that “frames of reference in different policy fields are also different, and do not all align with the human rights agenda with the same intensity.” Finally, the third, non-technical, but political and strategic reason may be that “the Union´s many competences result in its obligation to cater to different interests, some of which may consider human rights to be a hindrance.”
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    When the EU funds meet the Charter of Fundamental Rights: on the applicability of the Charter of Fundamental Rights to EU funds implemented at the national level
    (Global Campus, 2017) Viță, Viorica ; Podstawa, Karolina
    When does the Charter apply to Member States implementing EU Funds? This is the core question addressed by this article following the Poclava judgement, whereby the Court of Justice of the European Union (the CJEU) held, for the first time, that the mere finding that a national social policy is supported by EU funds is not in itself sufficient to trigger the applicability of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU (the Charter). The judgement is important as it suggests that the Charter does not apply to all Member States’ acts co-funded from EU budgetary resources. Against this background, this contribution sheds lights on situations where the Charter applies to operations implementing EU Funds at the national level departing from a close reading of CJEU case law. Subsequently, the article explains why the finding that the Charter does not apply to all EU funded actions at national level is not satisfactory and advocates for an active Charter promotion in response.