{"id":13014,"date":"2015-10-05T06:02:51","date_gmt":"2015-10-05T11:02:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=13014"},"modified":"2015-10-05T06:02:51","modified_gmt":"2015-10-05T11:02:51","slug":"its-official-uk-admits-human-rights-no-longer-a-priority-of-british-foreign-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=13014","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s Official \u2013 UK Admits \u201cHuman Rights\u201d No Longer a Priority of British Foreign Policy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It\u2019s Official \u2013 UK Admits \u201cHuman Rights\u201d No Longer a Priority of British Foreign Policy<\/a><\/h3>\n
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Not that they ever were, but they\u2019ve finally decided to be explicit about it. Which to be honest, is pretty scary.<\/p>\n

From\u00a0the\u00a0Independent<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

Human rights are no longer a \u201ctop priority\u201d for the Government, Britain\u2019s most senior Foreign Office official has admitted, as ministers put resources into supporting trade deals ahead of tackling injustice in other parts of the world.<\/strong>\u00a0In a remarkably frank admission to MPs, Sir Simon McDonald, Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Office, said that human rights no longer had the \u201cprofile\u201d within his department that they had \u201cin the past\u201d.<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, you read that right. Trade deals. You know like\u2026<\/p>\n

Forget the TPP \u2013 Wikileaks Releases Documents from the Equally Shady \u201cTrade in Services Agreement,\u201d or TISA<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

And he added that the Conservatives\u2019 \u201cprosperity agenda\u201d was now \u201cfurther up the list\u201d of areas on which the department was concentrating its dwindling resources.<\/em><\/p>\n

Last night human rights charities said Sir Simon\u2019s comments were as \u201castonishing as they were alarming\u201d and described the change in focus as \u201cdeeply regrettable\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sir Simon made his remarks to Mr Blunt\u2019s committee when he was questioned about how his department was prioritising resources. Asked whether human rights were now one of its \u201clower-priority activities\u201d,\u00a0Sir Simon replied: \u201cWell, answering as Permanent Secretary, I say that although it is one of the things we follow, it is not one of our top priorities.\u201d He added: \u201cIn a more constrained environment, the need to concentrate on Europe, Eastern Europe and Russia, and the Middle East has supplanted it to an extent.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So starting World War 3 is now the priority. Go it.<\/p>\n

And furter corporate profits, naturally\u2026<\/p>\n

While Sir Simon said human rights was part of that work, he also admitted it was secondary also to the need to promote British companies abroad.<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s Official \u2013 UK Admits \u201cHuman Rights\u201d No Longer a Priority of British Foreign Policy Not that they ever were, but they\u2019ve finally decided to be explicit about it. Which to be honest, is pretty scary. From\u00a0the\u00a0Independent: Human rights are no longer a \u201ctop priority\u201d for the Government, Britain\u2019s most senior Foreign Office official has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[9590,7217,1795,9591,6172,9592,820,2080,862,880],"class_list":["post-13014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","category-liberty","tag-british-foreign-policy","tag-corporate-profits","tag-human-rights","tag-independent","tag-tisa","tag-trade-in-services-agreement","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-war","tag-wikileaks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13014"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13015,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13014\/revisions\/13015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}