Sarkozy's Analysis Of The Human Rights Diplomacy

The 2007 French presidential election was held to elect the successor to Jacques Chirac, and Nicolas Sarkozy, candidate of the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), won. During the election, Sarkozy got lots of support as a human rights defender; after the election, Sarkozy also integrated the human rights into his foreign policy. After riots occurred in Lassa on March 14th, Sarkozy made a series of irresponsible statements, and then he boycotted the Beijing Olympic Games in the name of the human rights, which seriously hurt the Sino-French relations.In fact, there is a close relationship between the French human rights diplomacy and the western doctrine of human rights. The latter provides a theoretical basis for the former. In France, from the 1980s, Mitterrand put the western doctrine of human rights into his foreign policy practice, especially into his China policy. During Chirac's term of office, French human rights diplomacy showed a more pragmatic attitude. When Sarkozy was elected as the president in 2007, continuing the French human rights diplomacy tradition, he promoted human rights diplomacy more actively, and due to his unique reasons, Sarkozy also showed his own characteristics in his foreign policy practice.Now Sarkozy's government has more or less given up the human rights diplomacy, and Sarkozy's foreign policy has returned to a kind of pragmatism. However, no matter which party or political leader is in power, human rights will always be a foundational principle in French foreign policy and play an important role in French diplomacy.