Human rights are under attack, but this is not the first time in our history that we have seen them assaulted; nor, sadly, will it be the last.  While we are experiencing a new forms of threat, this time emerging from the West, it is important for us to ensure that we don’t lose perspective, or hope: we would do well to not let a good crisis go to waste.

We should also not romanticise the past and assume that there was some halcyon era where human rights were the basis of the international system and domestic politics.  Human rights have always been contested and frequently used for utilitarian purposes in transactional ways.  Even in the post war era, it took Raphael Lemkin three years to lobby for the UN Convention on Genocide at a time when one would have thought that the horrors of the Shoah (holocaust) would have spurned the world into action.

The notion of human rights is profoundly rooted in ideas of human dignity which arise from religious traditions.  Placed as they are in the realm of politics, which often eschews such ideas in favour of “pragmatic”, “real” issues such as the pursuit of power.  The contradictions are obvious, since in a human rights paradigm, people are always and end in themselves; whereas in the Realist way of thinking, people are a means to an end.

In a time when world leaders are challenging not just the structures of democracy, but they are also questioning its very foundations, it is important for those who defend human rights not to be caught up in the miniature of the sound and fury which at the end of the day, signifies nothing.

Part of the problem is that we live in a world where media and social media are ubiquitous.  News is instantaneous and there is a rush to get information out quickly, sometimes at the expense of facts.  Retractions are buried in small print and truth can be the first casualty.

We also live in a world where news is around us 24-hours a day.  Whereas in the past, “breaking news” indicated something urgent, everything is now classified as “breaking”.  Our sense of proportion has been skewed and we live constantly on the edge where there is a new catastrophe emerging every hour.

Not only is there the constant bombardment of news, but there is also a lessening sense of proportion.  Everything takes on the hue of being catastrophic.  News media is now so polarised that even the slightest infraction of an opponent is seen as a cause of deep, existential concern.  Every action, every reaction of “the other” is seen as a threat to the life and values, requiring immediate and wholesale condemnation.

In reaction to this, we have seen that some people become news “junkies”, addicted to being online; while others have simply switched off.  Both reactions are potentially disastrous for our societies.  For those addicted, algorithms and constant bombardment of uncontested ideas reinforce their beliefs.  For those disengaging, there is the danger that those in power may use that power in unfettered ways: the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

The descent into a binary world which ignores complexity and nuance is both worrying and dangerous.  Because every view that is not one’s own is seen as an existential attack on one’s values, the possibility of understanding and dialogue is reduced.  The humanity of the other is diminished and allows for the possibility of abuse and even violence.

But we have been here before: colonialism, slavery, genocide, the cold war, the war on terror.  All of these have been assaults on human rights.

Having said that, we cannot fall into the danger of being complacent.   Even if the moral arc of the universe “bends towards justice” (Martin Luther King, Jr), it is important for people of goodwill to act.  The signs of turning away from human rights abound; clear and swift decisive action is necessary.

“Nobody made a greater mistake than they who did nothing because they could do only a little” (Edmund Burke). The price of inaction is too high.

The intention one has, however, is just as important as the action itself.  All too often, we are seeing people who accuse others of disrespect, showing the same disrespect to their opponents.  Commentators often demean those with whom they disagree, using language which is designed to belittle and demean the other.  Opponents motives are attributed with every mal-intention while those in one’s own “tribe” are accepted unquestioningly.  And when the actions of one’s own group are brought into question, the response is often to glibly set the bad actions aside in favour of pointing the finger back at the other.

We forget that if one uses anger and violence to counter the very same, we are not diminishing the harm, but contributing to it.  We cannot use the same tools as those we oppose.  Listening to understand is a foreign and antithetical concept to the current culture.  We have become caught up in a cycle of binaries and cancel culture which are antithetical to human rights and respecting the idea that people may have different views to our own.  We have lost the sense of defending to the death a person’s right to say something to which we profoundly disagree (Voltaire).

But we would do well to remember that allowing for someone to express their opinion is not the same thing as accepting or tolerating it.  The paradox of tolerance is that we need to oppose intolerance in order to preserve a tolerant society (Karl Popper).

As the assaults grow daily and human rights are attacked from all sides, it would behove us to remember that this is not the first, nor indeed the last time, that fundamental human values are being threatened.  We can take heart that while the struggle continues, every act of justice towards another is the building block of a more just future.

By Felicity Harrison