Nice People do Nasty Things
In fact, if you subscribe to the human rights faith, only Nice people do Nasty things. There are no non-Nice people.
That is not meant (for once) to be a dig at the HRE (or the human rights) community. Really. If you believe in human rights, then it only makes sense if every individual, whatever they do or have done, is still fundamentally human; still has fundamentally human emotions, reactions, desires, regrets, intentions, hopes, fears, and little bursts of irritation, admiration, inspiration and frustration; still tries to do good for his or her immediate circle; and possibly tries to Do Good in a wider sense as well.
'Hand on heart, I did what I thought was right.' So said someone who, in trying to do what he thought was right, did one of the nastiest things imaginable, with horrendous and irreparable consequences. And actually – I even believe he had persuaded himself it was the right thing to do. Certainly a lot of people I know (and respect) thought it was the 'right' thing to do at the time.
But where does all that get us? If everyone is Nice, and everyone tries to do what they think is right - and I think I believe that as well – and yet we end up with crimes against humanity, not to speak of lesser crimes: how should we react? Do we just shrug our shoulders and reckon that what will be, will be? Do we aim to be tolerant and see the humanity in the doers of Nastiness? Do we draw the line anywhere – and if so, where?
The safe answer is to say that we condemn anything - but nothing else - that violates human rights. And the fashionable answer is that we don't condemn the person, merely the act: we aim to understand the person, to give him or her a second chance, to be tolerant.
In theory, that is a noble answer. Maybe - in theory it is the 'right' answer. But there are problems:
1. 'Human rights' is a relatively arbitrary line (which anyway shifts). It is OK for pragmatic purposes to use this line (and essential in matters of international politics) but it does not advance the ethical argument. It merely gives us a line in the sand which we can use to hide behind (excuse the mixed metaphors). Don't we want to be braver than that, and think about where we would like it to be? Someone has 'decided' where it is at the moment, after all. We shall look pretty silly when it changes.
2. Where the human rights line is at the moment is almost bound to be inadequate - too far back - because it has been agreed primarily by pragmatist governments at a level, and in such a way, that it is far enough removed from normal practice as to be relatively harmless. To see that, you only have to look at the state of the world today and the things that still fall on the 'right' side of the human rights line (for the purposes of governments, anyway) - homelessness, lack of health care, control orders.
3. More to the point for the purposes of this question: where the human rights line is at the moment is inadequate as a guide to human behaviour because it is not intended to be a guide to human behaviour. It is intended to be a guide for governmental behaviour. We use it as a 'guide' for human behaviour because the ethical system that underlies it is sympathetic (and noble) to us. But the ethical system is both richer and stricter (I think) than the legal system it gave birth to. It must be.
1 - 3 above are about where the line should be, where it is now and what it is intended for. The hardest question - and the question HRE needs to address - is what we do in the realm that human rights is not intended for: in the realm of personal attitudes. Human rights are about behaviour, which may be a consequence of 'nasty' (or nice) attitudes. The realm that is troubling is precisely the realm of those attitudes.
2 more things, just to note:
1. I remember being surprised when I first started working in Russia that human rights activists were often at each others' throats. It seemed that if there was ever a group of people who should work together, who should be able to swallow (and tolerate) their differences - it ought to be human rights activists. I wondered - and wonder - whether HR activists (not only Russian ones) are actually some of the least 'tolerant' people; and I wonder if that is a coincidence. It is hard to be tolerant when you spend your working and resting hours looking at mutilated bodies or photographs of them, reading or listening to endless accounts of yet more brutal, sadistic, and inhumane acts.
2. I wonder if intolerance in HR activists is not only a fairly natural reaction to the world they tend to see, but also a necessary quality for the work they try to do. Tolerating torture doesn't get you very far in trying to put an end to it.
And then I wonder... whether the human rights and the human rights education communities need to be, should be so very far apart that what is valued in one community is despised in the other.