Last February, French company Dassault Aviations concluded a deal with Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi exchanging 24 Rafale combat jets for 5.2 billion dollars. The deal was chaperoned by the French state, which even lent Egypt 3 of the 5 billion dollars involved in the sale. In France, this deal was hailed as a tremendous success; the Figaro’s headline read “Historic contract for the Rafale in Egypt“ and French president François Hollande, in unison with his right-wing detractors, lauded the sale publicly, even sending his Defence Minister to sign the deal in “the name of France.” Indeed, the Rafale was for 14 years a thorn in France’s foot. Acknowledged to be one of the better planes on the market, the Rafale had since 2001 failed to seduce any national defense force enough to make them forget its formidable price tag. Deliverance came with the fall of the Euro and this first sale of the Rafale to the Egyptian Air Force. At the time of writing, France had just secured a second deal, this time with India.

Now, it’s no news that big and powerful countries have been selling arms to Human Rights violators, and France’s Egypt-Dassault deal is only a recent and particularly telling example. However, this does not make it more excusable in any way. Nor does that spare international organizations from clamping down on those deals. The Swedish position could, perhaps, wake Europe from its amoral mediocrity. While seemingly “promoting human rights and democracy around the world”, member states of the EU have sold weapons around the same corners of the globe they strive to “protect”, without the Council of Europe, supposed “defender of human rights”, ever rising an eyebrow. Sadly, this hypocrisy has lasting and negative consequences on Europe’s capacity to actually promote human rights, as it undermines critically the European Union’s credibility vis-à-vis the rest of the world. By actively taking sides and sponsoring human rights violation, Europeans are not only violating their principles, they are also harming their diffusion around the globe.

Human Rights Watch identifies the threats facing citizens in more than 90 countries including torture, detention and censorship.

The analysis of more than 90 countries is undertaken with human rights activists in the respective countries and this year, Kenneth Roth, HRW director, said human rights violations were fuelling the rise of groups like Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, Boko Haram and others.

“Human rights violations played a major role in spawning or aggravating many of today’s crises,” Mr Roth said as the report was published on Friday. “Protecting human rights and ensuring democratic accountability are key to resolving them.”

The organisation welcomes the recent report into torture in the US but highlights that Barack Obama has "refused to investigate, let alone prosecute, those who ordered the torture detailed in the Senate report".

HRW also expressed concern about France's reaction to the Charlie Hebdo attacks - which led to 17 people killed by terrorists Said and Cherif Kouachi as well as Amedy Coulibaly - amid fears the government will use counterterrorism laws "to prosecute speech that does not incite violence... and encourage other governments to use such laws to silence their critics"