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especially when communication come to deadlock. Fisher, (20012) noted that, Inter-national relations are largely based on abstract issues such as foreign policies agree-ments, international law, morality, projects and programmes that have greater poten-tials to generate mismatch and conflicts even if there is will to cooperate.
4.4 THE GAMBIA AND EU RELATIONS THROUGH THE EU-ACP
ARRANGEMENT
The Gambia and the EU may be miles apart, however the two had until recently very close partnership drives from historical links and developmental desires. The Gambia,
a former colony of Great Britain, joined the Georgetown Agreement that established the ACP countries in 1976 after Britain’s accession to the EC. Since then, The Gambia,
and EU had had fruitful partnership through both participations in the EEC/EU-ACP forums and treaties signed between the EU and ACP countries. Largely, this demon-strates the shared interests and values between the EU and The Gambia. However, it is important to note that until recently these shared interests and values were centred mainly on developmental objectives and trade. The EU provide significant budgetary support to The Gambia through the European Development Fund that comes in vari-ous EDF programmes tailored made in accordance to the Lomé and Cotonou agree-ments.
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4.4.1 THE LOMЀ CONVENTION
The Lomé Convention succeeded the Yaoundé Agreement that was designed only for former French colonies. It was introduced in 1975 and revised multiple times to factor in new developments. As the first agreement between the EEC and African, Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP) countries, it did not stress much on democracy and human rights values but rather focuses on trade and development cooperation aiming at opening European markets, controlling economic shocks and reducing poverty in the ACP countries as cited in art.2, 12, 16 of the convention16. It is clear in the first EEC/EU-ACP agreement; the concerns were not focus on democracy and human rights. Therefore, these never became issues of controversies. Both ACP countries in-cluding The Gambia and EEC/EU had common and shared implicit interests in trade, industrialization and development cooperation, which was the basis of the 1975 Lomè Convention.
16 The first Lome’ Convention signed in 1975 article 2 allows products originating from ACP countries access to EC markets without customs duties. Art.12 focuses on trade promotion that shall enable ACP countries drive maximum benefits from trade cooperation, arrangement, and industrial cooperation (tittle I, chapter 1 and tittle III). In addition, article 16 focuses on remedying the harmful effects of in-stability of export earning helping ACP countries achieve in-stability, profitability and sustain economic growth.
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Democracy and human rights began to feature on the agreement between EEC/EU and ACP countries in the revised convention of Lomè IV, 1989 and Lomè IV BIS, 1995. Earlier concerns of the partnership was on human rights and the revised version of 1989 article V for the first time, commits all signatories to respect the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and mentioned a suspension clause to that effect. Article V had three dimensions, the first deal with the relationship between de-velopment cooperation and human rights. The second focused on the indivisibility of rights and issues of discrimination and the third focused on allocation of financial re-sources for the promotion of human rights. However, since the introduction of the human rights language, the ACP countries had always been disappointed in the EC’S interpretation of the convention on delicate matters such as human rights (Moi Avi, 1995). This was an indication of the possible difference of interpretation human rights matters is prone to. Notwithstanding, in the mid- term review of the convention, there was a consensus on the inclusion of democracy and human rights on article 5 as es-sential elements of the cooperation. For the first time EU and ACP member countries acknowledged the application of democratic principles and consolidation of rule of law in the cooperation agreement (ACP-EU Courier, 1996).
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4.4.2 THE COTONOU AGREEMENT
The Cotonou Agreement is the successor of the Lomè Convention. Signed in June 2000, it has been revised in June 2005 and 2010. The Cotonou Agreement is a depar-ture of the EU from business as usual with the ACP countries. EU has become a glob-al actor in the multiple reglob-alms of internationglob-al politics such as human rights, democ-racy and climate change issues. This means EU relations with other countries need fine-tuning to factor in changes in EU’s global approach to concerns of human rights and democracy (Babarinde and Faber, 2005). This agreement, unlike the Lomè Con-vention, laid emphasis on the partnership and provided framework of agreement con-sisting of objectives, principles and options for instrument (Art.1, 2 &3)17. The
Agreement goes beyond just a mention of observation of human rights and democratic
17 Article 1 laid down the objectives as expediting economic, cultural and social development to ACP states, with a view to contributing to peace, security and to promoting a stable democratic environ-ment, as well as reducing and eventually eradicating poverty consistent with the objectives of sus-tainable development and gradual integration of ACP countries to the global economy.
Article 2: outlined the fundamental principles such as equality of the partners and ownership of the development strategies but in due regards for the essential and fundamental elements in article 9 and participation of other actors such as ACP parliament, and local authorities and different kinds of other actors in ACP states.
Article 3: commit all parties to the framework of the agreement to take all appropriate measures for the achievement of the objectives.
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governance as concerns but rather includes them as ‘essential fundamental elements’
of the agreement (article 9) and also introduced a political dialogue component for parties ‘to engage in comprehensive, balanced and deep political dialogue leading to commitments on both sides’(article 8). The dialogue is aim at avoiding recourse to the
consultation procedures in article 9618. The political dialogue according to subsection 4: ‘shall focus, inter-alia, on specific political issues of mutual concerns or of general significance for the attainment of the objectives of this Agreement, such as arms trade, excessive military expenditure, drugs, organized crime or child labour, or
discrimina-tion of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status…’
Countries that signed this Agreement commit to all the articles of the agreement, also resort to the political dialogue in case of dispute, and only use article 96 as last resort.
The Gambia and the EU as signatories of the Agreement had since 2001, initiated discussion on a number of factors particularly relating to human rights. While there is progress in the area of women and children rights, the dialogue faults immediately the EU requested with a timescale, the execution of a seventeen points demands mostly
18 Article 96 calls for consultation procedure and appropriate measures as regards human rights, democratic principles and rules law when political dialogue fails.
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relating to human rights issues such as prohibition of torture and abolition the death penalty.