Bilateral relations with China, India and South Africa

Abstract

This report presents a study of the EU’s efforts in promoting human rights towards three partner countries: India, South Africa and China. These three countries were chosen for three reasons. First, they are major global actors, second they are culturally different from the west and finally they all share a level of resentment against Europe promoting its values given their historical legacies (although in greatly different ways). The question this report aims to answer is how are EU’s efforts for human rights promotion received in these three countries. To answer this question four major issue areas were identified as angles of study: 1. Human Rights dialogues and consultations; 2. EU influencing and empowering local actors (such as NGOs or CSOs); 3. the link between Human Rights and economic/trade relations; and finally, 4. criticism formulated by these countries against the EU. In order to meaningfully answer these questions this report took the approach of introducing these issues from the perspective of the EU’s partner countries themselves. Thus, one FRAME partner from each country studied was offered a general framework to work with including specific questions and was asked to draft a case study accordingly. This approach has some obvious merits, but it also has some potential weaknesses. Benefits include that readers get the opportunity to learn about how the EU is seen from the outside, i.e. what aspects of its human rights policies are praised and what aspects of it are criticised. Furthermore, they can also read suggestions on how local experts advise the EU to improve its policies in helping their country to improve human rights conditions. The possible weakness is that this approach emphasises these issues from the partner countries’ perspectives, thus, for example, issues which are sensitive to discuss in the partner country may receive less attention in the study. […] Following the case studies, the report concludes with a brief summary of the study and a section that highlight the main issues and recommendation raised in the case studies.