ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the EU’s decision not to sanction Rwanda after a number of human rights violations during the last decades. Given the EU’s commitment to a rights-based approach, we would expect the EU to sanction Rwanda for human rights violations. How can this choice to step out of the human rights-based approach to development be explained? I suggest that the weighing of various norms and the choice to follow one of them can explain why sanctions have been avoided in Rwanda. The concern that sanctions may have negative impact on the social and economic conditions in the country explains why the EU ultimately decided not to sanction Rwanda. The EU’s reactions can be interpreted as an example of norm collision, in which a high-visibility rights-based approach is set aside due to the concern that sanctions could be disproportionally costly to the population at large.
