As a team of advisers craft the EU’s new foreign and security policy — known as the EU Global Strategy — on behalf of EU High Representative Federica Mogherini, one has to wonder what shape this important new strategy will take and whether it will pay anything more than lip service to the underlying causes of instability and discontent in the world today.
As current global challenges — such as migration, climate change, terrorism and slow economic growth — gain in importance, will the EU lose sight of the causes in its efforts to tackle the symptoms?
At the root of many of these challenges are human rights violations, which manifest themselves in poverty and inequality, but also in insecurity. That is when the world starts sitting up and taking notice. As former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan wisely said, “We will not enjoy security without development, we will not enjoy development without security, and we will not enjoy either without respect for human rights.”
About the author
Tanya Cox
Tanya has been working at Plan International EU office since 2013. As the senior policy and advocacy manager, she works with all the EU institutions and the member states to adopt ambitious strategies on children's rights, child protection and gender equality, to follow up on their implementation and to influence EU development policy and practice in a range of areas. She regularly trains EU staff from across the globe on children’s rights and child protection.
