The High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, said in his 2021 Annual Report on Human Rights and Democracy in the World, dated 8 April and obtained by EUROPE, that the year 2021 had posed “unprecedented challenges for human rights and international humanitarian law, democracy and multilateralism”.
In his report, Mr Borrell cites the consequences of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, the continuing repression in Belarus, the violence of the military junta in Myanmar, the “massive violations” of human rights and international humanitarian law in Ethiopia and Mali, and the unprecedented scale of gender-based violence in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.
According to the High Representative, “for the first time the number of autocratic regimes in the world has exceeded the number of democracies, and nearly 75 percent of the world’s population lived in a country that faced deterioration in 2021”. In 2021, 358 human rights defenders were killed.
“The universality and indivisibility of human rights must be upheld, vigilance against attempts to undermine international commitments must be maintained, and accountability for human rights violations and abuses must be strengthened”, the report says.
In response, Borrell warns that the EU wants to continue to use its economic leverage to defend human rights in external action.
The report highlights various EU actions in 2021, including the adoption of the human rights sanctions regime and the launch of the €1.5 billion Global Europe Human Rights and Democracy programme for the period 2021-2027.
See the report: https://aeur.eu/f/18k (Original version my French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)