Of all people one might expect to be absolutist about morality, human rights educators must rank quite high. These are people who have apparently chosen one system of morality above all others - that of human rights - and are so sure of its authoritative position that they even educate others to believe in it.
Their absolutism in this respect often worries me: not only because human rights is a huge, complex and even disputed field, about which those working in HRE apparently have little need to know. But also because the 'slogans' of irreducibility, universality, interrelatedness, indivisibility - among others - are thrown about with little awareness or discussion of what they might mean; and with almost religious devotion. These slogans are either very radical indeed - and few people live up to them in practice - or else they are empty slogans. Then let us discuss them properly.
But they are discussed very little, and indeed, morality per se is discussed hardly at all within the bounds of HRE. HRE-ers seem almost afraid of morality, unwilling to commit themselves morally, disapproving of those who dare to make moral judgements. When it comes to the small, everyday decisions that people make, HRE suddenly becomes intensely relativist. Things are 'personal decisions', 'none of our business', 'individual choices'.
Yes - but all human actions are, at the end of the day, 'personal decisions' and 'individual choices' - with the exception, perhaps, of those carried out under torture. Even the act of torturing could be viewed as a personal decision: but how is it helpful to view it in that way?
If HRE is to make any changes in the world - which is what it says it aims to do - then surely it needs to start committing itself to something beyond what is written down in international law, to stop hiding behind the weakest and least controversial versions of the moral system it claims to believe in, and start realising that large violations are the result of small, personal decisions by individual people.
It is perfectly possible to respect - in the weakest sense - those people while still condemning the acts.