about human and european consultancy

Thomas Hammarberg of Sweden took over recently as the Council of Europe’s (CoE) Commissioner for Human Rights in Strasbourg. Deutsche Welle had an interesting interview with him titled ‘The protection of Human Rights is Endangered’. A few quotes from that interview:

Does a Commissioner for Human Rights even have power?

He has a certain power when he primarily communicates with non-governmental organizations and the ombudsman or the human rights commissioner on the national level in every country. ….

What do you consider the biggest problems for your task?

I think it’s currently xenophobia in Europe. People seem to be afraid of foreigners and suspicious of minorities. This is a warning signal. I hope that I can show with my work that these sentiments are not justified. ….

Which countries have particular deficits?

My approach is that all countries have human rights problems. …. I am rather skeptical towards governments, which smugly say that there are no human rights abuses in their country. ….

What significance does Russia have in the Council of Europe?

Russia is the largest country in the Council of Europe with the highest population. …. It’s absolutely necessary for the Commission of Human Rights to follow very closely what happens there and, of course, also express recommendations for improvement. ….

What would you like to have achieved at the end of your six-year term?

I hope that Belarus is a member of the Council of Europe by then. It isn’t today, since it’s undemocratic. But I think that there will even be reforms in that country, which theoretically belongs to Europe. ….

It is good to see that NGOs are acknowledged like this and, after we made an evaluation of three Council of Europe - European Commisssion joint programmes in Russia last year, we are even more interested in following the relationship between the CoE and Russia in the field of human rights.

Last week we were informed that we were not selected for an assignment for the CoE European Comittee for the Prevention of Torture (See EXTERNAL CONSULTANT FOR CPT.doc for the Terms of Reference), because the budget we proposed was too high. When we prepared the tender we realised this risk, but decided to go for quality and let the CoE decide.