Strange paradoxes

Janne Haaland Matlary, former deputy Foreign Minister of Norway and Professor of Political Doctrine at the State University of Oslo, recently received the 2007 “St. Benedict Prize for the promotion of life and the family in Europe”. The presentation ceremony was held at the Benedictine abbey of Santa Scolastica at Subiaco (Italy). In his acceptance speech Matlary spoke of human rights and Europe. We are glad to cite a passage from it below. While Europe and the West extols the rest of the world to follow human rights and in fact uses this as conditions for aid and cooperation; European politicians simultaneously refuse to define, in an objective manner, what these rights really mean. Secondly, while these rights are appealed to more and more, they are undermined as sources of authority in the erosion of the belief that they can be defined in a clear and objective way. To know what human rights objectively mean is more than a matter for the philosophically inclined. But even more important is European politics itself: we are moving away from the nation-state based on ‘nation’ towards a European polity based on human rights. If these cannot be defined in a clear manner, we are in a state of ethical anarchy. A further very important issue is that are undermining the very concept of human rights through ‘politisizing’ it at both the national and the international level. There is a ferocious and continuous process of redefining individual human rights in areas of contention, such as the family, childrens’ rights, womens’ rights, and so on. We expect that European states are model democracies, ready to teach others from their experience, but the reality is very different. There is no clear basis of human rights, but an intense struggle over the interpretation of these rights, and often a major discrepancy between what a state proclaims in solemn international conferences and domestic policy. In more general terms, while ‘the right to life’ is the first and primary human right according to the Universal Declaration, most European states have had abortion on the law books for many decades. While the right to marry is defined as a right for ‘every man and woman’ in the same declaration, same-sex ‘marriage’ is increasingly introduced in European states. While children have a right to know and be raised by their biological parents or in a similar situation according to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), this seems to be ignored when children are ‘produced’ from anonymous donors. While the right to special societal protection for mother and child is defined in the UN declaration, motherhood is often regarded as a drawback for women in the European labour market, and mothers are discriminated against. While the family has a right to a sustainable income: just wage, in the declaration, labour rights are more and more neglected in European states and individual taxation makes a mockery of the ‘family income’ concept. While religious freedom includes the right to public and private worship, Muslims are met with suspicion and opposition when they want to erect a mosque, and other religions, including the predominant one in Europe, Christianity; is sought pushed back into the private sphere. As stated, there is a curious situation; a paradox, in the many discrepancies between the human rights professed, especially abroad, and the political reality at home in Europe. The paradox of modern European democracy is exactly this: we profess and impose human rights all over the globe, but refuse to define the substance of these rights at home.