Liberté, égalité and weaponry: France awards Egypt’s Sisi its highest award despite human rights abuses

There has been a constant trend of quite clear cynicism, being cast as rough pragmatism, for years,” said Dr HA Hellyer, senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London. “The underlying calculus is quite clear – the Elysee has priorities in the region, and those priorities may include human rights protections within a long list, but not at the top of that long list, irrespective of the Elysee’s declared support for human rights.”