The Daily Clarity

The rise and fall of Rama Yade, the French Minister for Human Rights

Rama Yade, in case you haven’t heard of  her, is a Junior Minister in French President Sarkozy’s cabinet. She is also probably just about to lose her job in a politically driven cabinet  reshuffle. Whether this is due to her performance, or an inherent contradiction in her Ministry’s portfolio, is the question of the day in France. Rama Yade, is a young Senegal-born woman, who was appointed to be the French Minister of Human Rights. This was a brave governmental experiment, her portfolio saw her deal with a lot of campaign issues that are both politically unpopular, and difficult to achieve resolution of from governmental office. This included campaigns aimed at ending a violence against women, the practice of using children soldiers in some countries, and discrimination against gays, among others. These are not the easiest issues to deal when your department is also tasked at a higher level with  international economic development. The Ministry for Human Rights sits within the broader Ministry of Foreign Policy, and this is where the problem began. Foreign Policy and Human Rights may not be automatically incompatible, but there are certainly frictions in their respective agendas.

Yade’s fall from Sarkozy’s brightest protege, to a ‘soon-to-be -axed’ Minister started with the visit to France by Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi. Libya has a very questionable human rights history, however, it also has natural resources that France desires, and is a buyer of technology that France wants to sell. Yade voiced her opinion, fitting with her portfolio, that France should not do business with Libya unless it addressed human rights issues in the country. This didn’t sit well with Sarkozy, who inked deals worth billions of dollars with Gaddafi during the visit. Yade was disciplined, and narrowly missed being fired. Yade stuck to her gun,s and said that Human Rights had to factor into French international relations. She was not supported by her boss, Bernard Koucher the Foreign Minister, who didn’t want to upset his boss, President Sarkozy. Koucher, who campaigned on humanitarian principles immediately reversed his positions with no apparent sense of embarrassment, only a need for diplomatic survival.  Koucher is quoted in an interview with the French Press as saying ‘there is an inherent contradiction between the fight for human rights and a state’s foreign policy’ — “even in France”  “This contradiction can be fruitful — but does it need to have a government aspect? I don’t think so any more.” He said working for human rights was “too ambiguous” a goal for a government to handle, and that it was an “error” to have asked Sarkozy to create the human rights portfolio — one of the few of its kind anywhere. “You can’t lead the foreign policy of a country only based on human rights,” Kouchner said.

Sarkozy in turn needed a diplomatic solution to the problem of Yade,  without seeming to back down from his humanitarian principles. He asked Yade to step down from French Parliament, and instead run for an European Union Parliamentary position, a sort of side ways move to a humanitarian body and away from a nationalistic agenda. Yade, not to be daunted to what amounted to a Presidential order, rejected Sarkozy’s offer in style and in public, when she went onto French national television and said “I am more motivated by a national mandate than a European mandate.” You have to have respect for someone who sticks to their principles and rejects the easy option. There seems little doubt that her statement will see her removed from office very shortly. The Minister for Human Rights will soon become an extinct position in French politics. We suspect that even though Rama Yade my be pushed aside, she will not be quickly forgotten, as a politician with this much principle is a rare beast indeed. Even the left-wing French Libération newspaper defended her, ’this woman is carrying the can for policies, good or bad, drawn up on high. She is presented as a lost sheep of politics. She is, above all, a scapegoat.’  We at The Daily Clarity would also like to offer Ms. Yade our congratulations and best wishes for her future career. Regardless of how well or badly she performed in office, a politician of principle is hard to find these days, and she deserves to be congratulated for her stand.