West confronts double standards in Arab response

West confronts double standards in Arab response
by Sophie Douez – swissinfo.ch – Oct 19, 2011 – 13:46

A senior Swiss diplomat, Peter Maurer, has admitted being frustrated at double standards present in the international community’s response to the Arab Spring.

Speaking at the Foreign Ministry’s annual human security conference in Bern on Tuesday, Maurer, State Secretary for Foreign Affairs, said it was fair to question the “unequal response” of the international community to events in different countries.

“I am often very frustrated by how the international community reacts in a double standard way,” Maurer told the more than 800 people who attended the conference titled “Uprisings in the Arab world: between hope and fears”.

“And in response I can only say that the effort is guided by other interests. If I could speculate, I would say that oil plays an important role in how the international community reacts to certain situations.”

Maurer was named president of the International Committee of the Red Cross on Wednesday and will take up the position in July 2012. He was responding to a question posed by Maryam Al Khawaja, a 24-year-old democracy activist from Bahrain. She asked why the international community chose to impose sanctions on Syria but not on Yemen or Bahrain.

Al Khawaja told the conference that young people in Bahrain felt “completely abandoned by the west”.

“The situation in Bahrain is not going away, if anything it is getting worse,” she said.

Maurer said finding a political consensus in the international community was often difficult. He pointed out that while there was strong support from Arab countries to “get rid of” Moammar Gaddafi in Libya for example, the inverse was true for Assad’s regime in Syria.

Christian Berger, Director for the Middle East at the European External Action Service of the European Union, said such decisions often came down to the avenues of engagement available in particular situations.

“For Bahrain and Yemen, there is still a way of addressing issues through normal diplomatic channels,” he said.

Transformation

With the discussion focused on the response of the west to the so-called Arab Spring, it was clear that both Switzerland and the EU have been scrambling in recent months to determine the best way to engage with the new political realities in North Africa and the Middle East.

“We see a transformation of the relationship between individuals and regimes in the Arab world,” Berger said, adding that the transformation “is focused on values like dignity and justice”.

Maurer said a new political approach was needed to overcome political “fault lines” in the region. He said that Swiss foreign policy had previously viewed the Arab world as “almost one world” – whereas in fact it is highly fragmented.

“We have to rethink, and actors in the region also have to rethink how they will position themselves in the global world,” Maurer said. “We are very cautiously trying to find our way in those countries and identifying where and who are the legitimate partners.” …more