ABSTRACT
This chapter – quite deliberately, yet only momentarily – aims to step outside of the overall structural rhythm and plan of this book. It has a threefold function, complementing the preceding chapters, and leading up to the chapters that follow. First, what follows is meant to offer to the reader interested in International Relations in general, and in Asia-Europe interaction in particular, a concise, contemporary critique of the position and meaning of Human Rights issues and Human Rights debates in Asia-Europe relations and in the context of the ‘Asia Policies’ of the European Union (EU). In the context of a relatively short overview, this chapter puts forward in particular an investigation of the ways in which matters of Human Rights underlie, give shape to, provide agendas for, and at times slow down, the EU’s foreign policy interaction with its dialogue partners across the Asia Pacifi c. Through a number of short, thematic, country-specifi c, regional and international, Human Rights perspectives, this chapter demonstrates that there is both a signifi cant ‘enabling’ and a considerable ‘inhibitory’ potential of
Human Rights and Human Rights debates in the EU’s relations with Asian interlocutors. The chapter also aims to suggest some ways in which this can be translated into concrete policy prescriptions for the EU and its AsiaPacifi c partners. It is based on, and complements, many of the fi ndings of my earlier book-length investigations of the human problematique in EU-Asia and EU-China relations (Wiessala 2002; 2006; 2009). Second, this present chapter has been made a part of this book in order to provide ideas, templates for discussion, and grounds for consensus, for those who view the Asia-EU relationship primarily through the ‘social-constructivist’ lens of ‘values’, education exchange, and understanding – and especially Higher Education. This is not to say, however, that normative theorists and legal scholars will not fi nd anything of interest in what follows (see Chapter 3). In supplying what is hoped may become a teaching-and-learning template for EU-Asia educational exchange, this chapter also proposes and promotes a more inclusive, ‘holistic’ understanding of the signifi cance and the potential of norms, values and the Human Rights discourse in the framework of future political, economic and cultural East-West contacts. In planning and laying out the chapter in this way, I have been mindful, above all, of the fact that Human Rights and Human Rights education feature prominently in the European Union’s Strategies, Communications, CountryPolicy Papers and Implementation Plans with regard to its Asian interlocutors. I have sought to demonstrate – mainly in the context of Chapter 4 (see above) – how Human Rights have infl uenced and accompanied the evolution of EU ‘Asia Policy’ in some key ways. For many years, since before the time of the 1994 New Asia Strategy (NAS), Human Rights matters constituted the very starting point and rationale of much of EU foreign policy interaction with Asia. As has been seen, a large number of the EU’s ‘Asia Strategies’ – be they on certain subjects, regions, countries or dialogue-formats – have been underpinned for a considerable number of years by the EU’s ‘normative’ focus and humanrights-guided (value-guided) foreign policy objectives in Asia. Other strategic priorities, such as voter-education, civic education and Higher Education exchange have frequently fl owed from this key objective (see Chapter 4). This prioritization, it has to be said, appears to have been fading from view throughout 2010 and at the beginning of 2011, under the infl uence of the massive new trade and investment opportunities of a rising, globalizing China and India, and following in part the example of the new foreign policy directions the new Barack Obama/Hillary Clinton Administration has been adopting in Asia. Many Asia-Europe scholars would argue that Human Rights have been ‘de-emphasized’ – ‘sacrifi ced’ even – in the overall scheme of priorities pertaining to Asia-Europe relations; others would perhaps be more cautious, countering that they have merely been ‘re-purposed’, transferred from the ‘offi cial’ sections of EU-Asia dialogue to the more informal channels of the relationship, into Human Rights ‘dialogues’, Human Rights ‘universities’ and Human Rights ‘symposia’ which draw in, in particular, many parts of civil society, young leaders, think-tanks and Higher Education institutions.
