FROM WORDS TO ACTIONS: LOCATING CHALLENGES FOR THE EUROPEAN AND NORTH AMERICAN APPROACHES TO HUMAN RIGHTS AND JUSTICE IN THE COMPLEX SYRIAN CRISIS

Back to Page Authors: Mulry Mondélice

Keywords: humanitarian assistance, Syrian crisis, human rights diplomacy, EU's external action, international law, migration policy, humanitarian assistance, states' foreign policy

Abstract: In the context of increasing humanitarian needs, at the heart of multilateral diplomacy and international law, human rights promotion and humanitarian assistance discourses are important components of international actors’ external actions. In particular, American and Canadian foreign policy and the European Union (EU) approaches have evolved in conceptualizing human rights as part of the rule of law doctrine, as well as humanitarian assistance in both natural disasters and conflicts contexts. While this places those actors as biggest donors in responding to crisis worldwide, the diversity of stakeholders, processes, and actions taken to promote human rights and international justice and to provide humanitarian assistance remain complex and somehow unclear. As a case in point, in the particular context of the Syrian multidimensional crisis, to what extent European and Nord American approaches to human rights and justice and their implementation interact with international standards and what kind of balance has been found by those three actors with regard to human rights protection, justice, humanitarian assistance and migration policy? Crossing international law and diplomacy with desk study and interviews with international experts and practitioners, and deepening an ongoing research on humanitarian assistance and human rights diplomacy begun at the McGill Center for Human rights and Legal Pluralism and the Laval University Jean Monnet Chair, this presentation is based on a paper to be published shortly in Canadian Yearbook of International Law. The paper aims to examine how and the extent to which the greatest source of humanitarian crisis since the Second World War, the Syrian conflict has contributed to the evolution of European and North American (USA and Canada) discourses and practices regarding humanitarian assistance and, to a certain point, international justice and security under international law. I argue that while a sui generis international organization, the EU tends to promote humanitarian assistance and international justice as part of solidarity through a set of regulations, processes and institutions in partnership with other humanitarian actors, American and Canadian approaches tend to show a certain unilateralism and a complex approach with statutes and policies focusing on an increasing role of their armed forces among other humanitarian actors. That being said, a closer look at the action taken by those three actors on one hand, and at the international standards relating to humanitarian aid, human rights and the rule of law on the other sheds lights on the inconsistency between values promoted and states’ migration policy and practices. This is grounded in both the legal nature and the multidimensional interests of those actors, as constructed and implemented through multilateral diplomacy and states’ foreign and defense policy that can be accentuated by increasing populist discourses on migration and security. For instance, in the Syrian crisis, such an inconsistency is supported by a lack of cooperation between the EU and its member states due to divergences regarding migration policy, a low resettlement of refugees, while humanitarian assistance is provided in the most affected countries and international justice is funded by the EU supporting the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism relating to the gross violations of international law in Syria. Consequently, the EU- Turkey Statement of 18 March 2016 participating in the externalization of migration policy without the effective possibility of monitoring by the Court of Justice of the EU remains an illustration of the diplomatic manipulation of the humanitarian action as a means to manage that complex crisis the whole international society has failed to properly respond to. On the contrary, interventionism with a focus on security and counterterrorism, humanitarian assistance and resettlement of refugees are all part of the North American actions in the Syrian crisis involving the international society in unending and complex diplomatic negotiations touching the democratization of the State. Not only are necessary more funding and efforts to coordinate actions under the cooperation between the EU’s Office for Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO) and the other actors involved in humanitarian aid mechanisms, but also humanitarian action should not be a means in externalizing migration policy. In such sensitive circumstances where violations of human rights are common practice, while the Syrian crisis has led to a certain leadership of the UN General Assembly whose practical effects depend on a better cooperation, the Canadian and US supreme courts, and the Court of Justice of the European Union have a key role to play in promoting the rule of law in monitoring standards mixing humanitarian action and migration policies negotiated by the institutions of the EU. Moreover, the EU and member states are urged to act in solidarity in such a multidimensional crisis, and the EU should also work hand in hand with new actors to improve the living conditions of people in humanitarian needs. In this quest, sort of reception at international level of the concept of national human rights institutions (NHRIs), velvet gloves in promoting and protecting human rights, in cooperation with the Global Alliance of NHRIs, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, the European Network of National of Human Rights Institutions, the Council of Europe High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the Network of National Human Rights Institutions in the Americas should be (more) involved in the human rights and humanitarian assistance diplomacy.