HUMAN RIGHTS AND DEMOCRACY ARE IN RETREAT WORLDWIDE, SAYS EUROPEAN UNION
Opinion by Sunday Chanda
There is a serious conversation to be had about double standards in the international human-rights debate.
The European Union has now published a report declaring that human rights and democracy are in retreat worldwide. That is an important admission. But it also raises a fundamental question: are these standards truly universal, or are developing countries such as Zambia subjected to a disproportionately harsh political microscope
Zambia should not be exempt from scrutiny. Neither should Europe, North America, Asia, the Middle East or any other part of the world. Human rights are universal precisely because no country gets a monopoly on defining them, and no country should receive immunity from scrutiny because of its wealth, power or geopolitical importance.
The danger is when legitimate criticism of Zambia becomes a convenient narrative of democratic failure, while the much broader democratic retreat acknowledged by the EU itself is treated as a global abstraction.
If democracy is in retreat worldwide, then the standard must be worldwide. If accountability is universal, it must be applied universally. And if human rights are genuinely human rights, they cannot become Western rights when convenient and African governance requirements when politically useful.
Zambia can accept constructive criticism without accepting a hierarchy of nations in which some countries are presumed to be democratic teachers while others are permanently placed in the dock.
The question is not whether Zambia should be held accountable. The question is: who holds the powerful accountable when the same democratic standards are tested in their own backyard?
If democracy is in retreat worldwide, as the EU itself says, then let us stop treating Africa as the classroom and Europe as the examiner. The standards must be universal or they are not standards at all.
Kozo!
SCC.
Note: This is my personal opinion in response to the EU Report.
Source:
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