On the occasion of its 13th General Assembly, EuroMed Rights calls on decision-makers and civil society in the Euro-Mediterranean region to put Human Rights at the forefront of their work.
Rarely has this been more crucial!
In the South-East of the Mediterranean, Israel’s genocide on the Palestinians has continued with impunity for more than a year at an unprecedented human cost: Tens of thousands of people killed, countless wounded, and millions forcefully displaced and starved while torture and other forms of mistreatment have become generalised. Rarely before has the Israeli state’s violations of international humanitarian law, human rights standards, and liberal democratic norms been more flagrant. The recent escalation of Israel’s attacks on the sovereign state of Lebanon now threatens to further expand the warfare with continued impunity. We call for an immediate and permanent cease-fire in Gaza and in the broader region. We also call for a two-way arms embargo on Israel and suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement.
Elsewhere in the Southern Mediterranean region, authoritarian governments have stepped up their pressure on civil society, liberal movements, opposition parties, the media and human rights defenders alike. They have devoted unprecedented resources to crushing and criminalising those who ask for justice, rights and dignity.
North of the Mediterranean Sea, illiberal parties and movements are gaining unprecedented political victories. In many European countries they are no longer marginal protest actors who challenge the liberal democratic norms of the establishment. Rather, they have become the norm, and now constitute an integral part of the political establishment. Consequently, key institutions of the European Union and several of its member states have deviated from their past commitment to promote and protect human rights and democracy. As such, elected European political elites have actively restricted or undermined the rights and freedoms of their fellow citizens in multiple instances, and most European governments proactively seek to limit the fundamental rights and freedoms of migrants and asylum seekers.
The parallel crack down on the human rights and democracy movements in the Middle East, in North Africa and in Europe deeply affects the foreign policies that bind the states across the Mediterranean Sea together. Today a dark shadow of human rights violations is cast by the joint attempts on the part of European, North African and Middle Eastern governments to control their borders, to stabilise the state apparatuses, and to increase their security by unconditionally supporting warmongering countries like Israel.
In such moments of political collapse and renewal, it is more important than ever to recall that human rights remain the best available tool for ensuring peace and human prosperity. Only by applying a human rights policy domestically and in foreign relations do we stand a chance of institutionalising and regulating the conflicts that threaten to rip our Euro-Mediterranean region apart.
This reality is not lost on people. From the Northernmost parts of the European Union to the furthest most corners of the southern Mediterranean countries, new political generations are picking up where uprisings of people in the MENA region, Black Lives Matter and #Metoo campaigns ended: Hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets over the past months alone to protest against their governments’ foreign and domestic policies. They have demanded that politics be based on peace, justice, democracy, rights and freedoms. To them we say: We stand with you more than ever!
As actors from the human rights movement in the regions bordering the Mediterranean Sea, we furthermore commit to continue our joint fight for a prosperous future in the region build on the universal and undivided principles of human rights and democracy. We will continue our struggle to enhance justice and accountability for all human rights violations throughout our region. We will press on with our fight to increase women’s rights and gender equality in all aspects of life. We will carry on reinforcing the rights of refugees and asylum seekers denouncing illegal pushbacks and documenting breaches on international and domestic law. We will persist in pressuring states and intergovernmental institution to ensure that economic and social rights are protected in their foreign policies. And we will fight to safeguard democracy, to ensure a proper space for civil society, and to protect the fundamental freedoms for citizens in the Euro-Mediterranean region in all their diversity from the Kurdes to the Amazigh.