The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) should take a ‘more robust’ position on human rights abuses across the entire Middle East, including countries such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain where the UK has close commercial ties, the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee has said in a report published today.
The report also noted that the FCO’s approach to China is not yielding results and that the ‘human rights situation (there) appears to be deteriorating’.
It urged the government to engage in ‘more explicit, hard-hitting and consistent public criticisms of human rights abuses in China’.
The report adds that the FCO should work more closely with other departments to ensure that its human rights agenda is shared across government.
Committee chairman Richard Ottaway MP said the committee agreed with the foreign secretary’s assertion that the Arab Spring represented an historic opportunity to advance human rights and political and economic freedoms in the region.
‘We welcome the way in which the government has put the UK at the forefront of international support for political and economic liberalisation in the region,’ he added, ‘and we recommend that the FCO place human rights - in particular political and civil rights - at the heart of its future work there.’
Ottoway recommended that future FCO annual reports on human rights should highlight countries where standards have improved markedly as well as identifying countries of concern.
He concluded: ‘We also welcome the Government’s recognition that the UK’s own human rights practices affect its international reputation and ability to pursue improvements in human rights standards overseas.’
Read the report.
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