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Human Rights In Crisis: The sacred and the secular in contemporary French thought by Geneviève Souillac

by
October 2006, no. 285

Human Rights In Crisis: The sacred and the secular in contemporary French thought by Geneviève Souillac

Lexington Books, $43 pb, 243 pp

Human Rights In Crisis: The sacred and the secular in contemporary French thought by Geneviève Souillac

by
October 2006, no. 285

It is hard to imagine that any reader of the text of the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights would be unmoved by the nobility of its aspirations. Born of the determination that human beings would never again have to suffer the oppressions and indignities that reached so hideous a climax in the events of World War II, it promises a world in which all people can enjoy a range of fundamental freedoms in peace and harmony. To observe that the promise has not been kept is a patent under-statement. Even in the most advanced democracies, where notions of universal human rights are foundational, there is a sense of crisis. Here in Australia, as the Victorian government moves to institute a bill of rights, people of responsibility and integrity are forced to confront what appears to be a systemic disregard for human rights by the federal government in its treatment of asylum seekers.

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