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Human rights and democracy are the products of the active participation of people building their own societies. From the perspective of the Arab Spring the US-led war to enforce democratic regime change from the outside appears all the more arrogant and colonial. The involvement of the United Nations in giving legitimacy to the process is highly problematic especially as its own recent report assesses the human rights situation in Iraq as 'fragile'. It will be Iraqi citizens drawing on their own resources who will create an authentic human rights culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The British government claimed that one of the objectives of the Iraq war 2003 was to establish democracy and to protect human rights. This article tracks the manner in which Iraq features in successive Foreign and Commonwealth Office annual Human Rights Reports, before and after the war. British initiatives at the United Nations were carefully choreographed so that British policy on Iraq would appear consistent with the international community. After the war, Britain's commitment to building a human rights culture in Iraq was much trumpeted but its actual policies were thin on the ground. This was a war in which both Iraqis and human rights were to be the losers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]