Amnesty chief slams EU for enabling erosion of international law
The European Union and most European states have acquiesced to US attacks on international law and multilateral mechanisms, Amnesty International criticized in its annual report, published on Monday.
According to the human rights organization, neither the EU nor the majority of its member states have taken "meaningful steps to halt Israel's genocide or end the reckless transfer of weapons and technology fueling crimes under international law worldwide."
Furthermore, they have been reluctant to enact blocking laws to shield targets of US sanctions, including judges and prosecutors at the International Criminal Court (ICC), the group alleged.
Italy and Hungary, for example, have refused to detain individuals subject to ICC arrest warrants on their territory, while France, Germany, and Poland have signaled they would do the same.
"Global leaders have been far too submissive in the face of assaults on international law and the multilateral system. Their silence and inaction are unforgivable," said Amnesty International's Secretary-General, Agnès Callamard, who presented the report to journalists on Monday.
This behavior demonstrates "a moral bankruptcy that will bring nothing but retreat, defeat, and the erasure of decades of hard-won human rights progress," she warned.
For the organization's leader, "appeasing aggressors is like pouring gasoline on the fire that will burn us all and devastate the future of generations to come."
"Some may be tempted to discard the system built over the past 80 years," she argued, but doing so would mean "dismissing hard-fought achievements—universal rights that protect against racial discrimination and violence against women, enshrine labor and union rights, and recognize the rights of Indigenous peoples."
"Political and economic predators, and those who enable them, are declaring the multilateral system dead—not because it is ineffective, but because it does not serve their hegemony and control," Callamard stated.
Read also:
- American teenagers taking up farming roles previously filled by immigrants, a concept revisited from 1965's labor market shift.
- Weekly affairs in the German Federal Parliament (Bundestag)
- Landslide claims seven lives, injures six individuals while they work to restore a water channel in the northern region of Pakistan
- Escalating conflict in Sudan has prompted the United Nations to announce a critical gender crisis, highlighting the disproportionate impact of the ongoing violence on women and girls.
