This paper will examine about promoting human rights in Russia by supporting NGOs. In my opinion, there are 3 strategy of European Union (EU) to promote human rights in Russia which include monitoring and reporting human rights situations, bring human rights NGOs into EU-Russia human right dialogue and spend considerable financial resources. The outline for this paper included introduction, background of the Russian human rights NGOs, theoretical framework using in this paper is liberalism approach, strategies of EU to promote human rights in Russia and conclusion.
In the recent decades, number of the NGOs in Russia has growing rapidly. Russia is the third largest trading partner of the EU and the economic factors have play a dominant role in determining the EU’s human rights policies vis-??-vis Russia. In 2001, Russia was home to approximately about 19,500 human rights NGOs which constituted approximately 5% of all registered NGOs. The human rights movement has experienced rapid geographical expansion while throughout the entire Soviet period the movement was almost completely concentrated in the Moscow and the human rights NGOs operate in all 89 regions of the Russian Federation. Since 2005, the EU and Russia have held twice-yearly consultations on human rights. On 17 November 2010, the latest round of the consultation on human rights was held. The EU was raising the number of concerns which relate to the specific human rights issues in the Russian Federation. It was include the issue pertaining to freedom of speech and assembly, prison conditions and ill treatment by law enforcement agencies and impunity.
Besides that, Russian human rights NGOs are considerably diverse in size, structure and policy ambit. Therefore, they set the agenda, establish standards, monitor and advocate enforcement, and act as aid and education organizations within the field of human rights. However, it does not engage many Russian. This is because the challenge has contributed to this situation such as many Russian human rights NGOs lack carefully designed policies of strategic interaction with the public and media. NGO failures of public communication also can explain by one of their difficult normative context. Russian perceives human rights in terms of three distinct normative dimensions which include civil liberties, economic rights and individual rights. One of the challenges faced by Russian human rights NGO is a resistant domestic normative context. Building cooperative engagements with the government and establishing themselves in state-dominated policy networks is another challenge for the Russian human rights NGOs.
In general, mechanisms and practices among human rights NGOs in Russia is an important characteristic of the Russian human rights NGO community. This is due to its intense involvement in various national and transnational knowledge, advocacy and policy based networks. Moreover, interaction between human rights NGOs at both Russian and European level has created forums where the information is transmitted and expertise is shared.
On the other hand, I would like to use the liberalism approach to relate this topic. This is because liberalism is a political and social philosophy advocating individual freedom, representational forms of government, progress and reform and protection of civil liberties. EU policy presupposes the existence of non-state actors who can be motivated to pressure governments to conform to human rights norms.
State actors act rationally to pursue strategic interests. However, it recognizes that decisions at EU level must meet the interaction between actors.
First strategy of European Union (EU) to promote human rights in Russia is monitoring and reporting human rights situations. EU practice of monitoring and reporting human rights situations in the third countries. It involves the important information sharing between EU institutions and the local human rights NGOs. Russian NGOs become an important source of information and expertise concerning the human rights situation in the Russian Federation. This is due to the information which provide by NGOs is used to prepare EU mission annual human rights fact sheet, EU Annual Human Rights Reports and the background for the discussions at EU institutions. For example, Russian NGOs will bring the actual cases of human rights abuse to the Delegation in Moscow.
In the general, Russian NGO involvement in EU human rights monitoring is effectively and functions well. There are many Russian human rights NGOs demonstrate their ability to act as watchdogs. However, those organizations involved in scrutiny activities initiated by external actors usually face the serious difficulties when they are trying to build the trust and partnership with the domestic governmental agencies. Thus, the active involvement in EU human rights monitoring may seriously restrict an NGO’s ability to build positive relationships with the state actors and educate them using EU-sponsored human rights ideas. This is quite well illustrated by the dynamics of EU-Russia human rights consultations.
Second strategy to promote human rights in Russia is EU appears to be making a serious effort to bring human rights NGOs into EU-Russia human right dialogue. EU was proposed design changes to EU-Russia human rights consultations which namely to broaden the list of participants from Russian ministries in year 2006. EU Human Rights Dialogues (HRD) is a new type of human rights policy instrument which implemented in reaction to the inability of the UN Commission on Human Rights to address serious and well-documented human rights violations in China. HRD are also conducted in the context of EU-ENP relations with Egypt, Israel, Tunisia, Morocco, Jordan and Lebanon. The guidelines of EU HRD were developed and adopted in 2001 and was slightly revised in 2004. The main aims of the HRD are to improve the human rights situation in the country with which the dialogue is initiated and to keep the channel of the communication open with regard to the human rights.
Russia was became the third country in which it was agreed in 2004 EU-Russia summit that the EU and Russia would have the senior level Human Rights Consultations twice a year. However, the Russia does not want to accept the term dialogue because they do not want the same category as China and Iran. Russia was represented by the officials from the Department of Humanitarian Cooperation and Human Rights of the Russian Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the European Union was represent by the officials from EU Presidency, the European Commission and the Council.
For the EU, the consultations are important but they also seem to be ineffective and limited to repeating the same message year after year. In the official Russian view, the effectiveness of the consultations is seriously undermined by incoherence between EU internal and external human rights practices such as human rights issues acquire more significant presence in the EU’s Russia policy than they do internally. Therefore, EU has developed an effective structure of human rights scrutiny for external but still lack the systemic approach to address human rights problems within the EU.
Third, EU has spent considerable financial resources on a complicated variety of programmes and projects to assist NGOs. EU assistance to Russia has been embedded in and shaped by the larger institutional landscape of EU foreign aid. Technical Assistance to the Commonwealth of Independent States (TACIS) programme is the main instrument of EU assistance to Russia. It is to provide grant-financed technical assistance to support the transition of Russia to a market economy, democracy and the rule of law. Human rights promotion and assistance to actors involved in fostering the rule of law in Russia was proclaimed as a TACIS priority. EU implemented a number of TACIS-based programmes designed primarily to support Russian civil society which include Link Inter-European NGOs Programme (LIEN). Institutional Building Partnership Programme (IBPP) is the successor of LIEN which aims to link the Russian NGOs and the local authorities with their EU counterparts.
In addition, the process of the EU to offer assistance to be misleading especially funding and project selection. But, there are a lot of resources have been categorized under a budget heading entitled European Initiative for Democracy and the Protection of Human Rights (EIDHR). EIDHR use thematic approach to offer assistance to NGOs active in democratization and human rights. It also is a unique among EU programmes. This is because it does not require host government consent and offers assistance to NGOs based in the recipient country. It enable EU to develop civil society support to the some who have albeit modest degree in the opposition to government. EIDHR also is the single mechanism left for the EU to influence the Russian human rights situation as all other purely democratic projects have turned out to be almost totally fruitless. It will continue to be an EU financial instrument in support of enhancing respect for human rights and bolstering the role of civil society in the promotion of human rights. The funding will be providing to national and international NGOs and international organization which include some UN bodies.
For many Russian human rights NGOs, EU assistance provide additional but the most important is to gain the access to European policy networks and to aggregate transnational (European) knowledge and competence. EU-sponsored initiative to provide both a rationale and opportunities for NGO actors to come into contact with their EU counterparts. It includes share the common vocabulary, world views, professional knowledge and skills involved in the transfer. So, EU assistance offers three important opportunities to Russian NGOs such as knowledge, network connections and funding. However, EU aid policy human rights NGOs often fall short of their potential to develop non-state transfer of European ideas, norms and to facilitate the development of Russian NGO community. There are four shortcomings is the cause of these failures. First shortcoming of EU policy is EU policy makers, all their rhetoric haven’t to decide how important and in what respect their support for Russian NGOs should be. Second shortcoming is EU has been reforming its external assistance for years and the reforms have so far produced controversial results. Third, lack of the accumulated knowledge about lessons learned by both EU policy-makers and human rights NGOs. Lastly is note that the type of interaction that the EU intends to Russia policy-maker and non-state actors on human rights is far from clear to many in Russia.
As a conclusion,
‘ The crucial importance of NGOs to human rights has been acknowledged in official EU texts.
‘ Idea of promoting human rights in Russia through Russian human rights NGOs has become embedded in EU policy discourses.
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