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CODE 18-77
CSCE COMMITMENTS : DEPENDENT TERRITORIES AND REALMS
1. Ms Foulds has kindly copied to me your minute of 26 November which records the Home Office's concern about the possible extension of CSCE Commitments to our Dependent Territories. I am copying the minute to the last 5 copy addressees. WIAD thoroughly approve of the general principle that those obligations and standards which HMG takes on in terms of Human Rights and other similar commitments should be extended to our Dependent Territories to ensure that they manage their affairs in accordance with relevant standards. On the WIAD side this can be an uphill struggle. In some of our DTs current legislation on judicial corporal punishment and homosexuality clearly falls short of those DTS obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights. Anguilla is not yet a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Aights. We are working in all these areas.
2. However, there is a balance to be struck between what ideally we should extend to our DTS and what in practice it is sensible to commit them to. It is not at all clear to me what the relevance of the CSCE process is to eg, Anguilla, St Helena, British Antarctic Territories or BIOT. While the European Convention on Human Rights provides a set of standards and yardsticks by which we require our DT Governments to comply it is not immediately clear to me that this should be the same with all aspects of the CSCE agreements. I think therefore you will need to look closely at what you are trying to achieve in this and perhaps draw distinctions between eg, Gibraltar and the Sovereign Base areas in Cyprus (which clearly have a foot in the European camp) and those other DTs which have more tenuous links with the continent. It would be a waste of all our time if, for reasons of dogma alone, we all were forced down the road of extensions of the CSCE treaties to all the DTs.
3. CSCE Unit will obviously wish to take the lead on making these assessments. We stand ready to help in whatever way we can.
RHOLA
HRC Holland
West Indian & Atlantic Department
WHMZ36 270 2631
17 December 1991
CC:
Mrs Glover, Legal Advisers Mr Watt, UND
Mr Pearce, SED
Ms Foulds, RAD
Mr Axworthy, Sec Pol Dept
Mr Furness, HKD Mr Wells, EAD
Mr Innes, SAAD Ms Gates, SPD
€ 18-77