Democratic governance and human rights protection in the EU-Africa Partnership: positive conditionality or political interference?
Keywords:
EU-Africa Partnership, human rights, democracy, governance, peace building, conditionality, Official Development Assistance, development cooperationAbstract
The new Action Plan for the implementation of the EU-Africa Strategic Partnership, agreed after the Third EU-African summit in Tripoli in 2010, renewed the commitments on the areas of peace and security, on the one hand, and democratic governance and human rights, on the other hand. This essay briefly reviews the current regulatory and institutional framework of the EU to promote human rights and democracy in third countries, the situation of human rights in various African countries —gathered in recent annual EU reports on human rights— and the measures and tools for democratization and human rights protection that the European Community has launched on this continent.After pointing out some thoughts on the overlap, limitations and future consequences that this model for democratization and human rights protection which the EU promotes in Africa might have, this essay concludes that, instead of a finalistic vision of democracy and human rights from the point of view of human development, a more instrumentalized vision is imperative: one which focuses on the institutional capacity to improve the public sector, the legal framework and the system of guarantees necessary for market stability.
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