I did a course on international law during my first year at university. Among other things, we studied the UN Charter & the Declaration of Human Rights
One of the things which struck me quite forcibly was the contrast between the obvious passion & intellectual force (& rightness) behind the idea of Human Rights & the sheer triteness of much of the result
It often simply seems unfair to enforce someones right at others expense. It seems just unfair, & so it goes against what seems to be the first, earliest moral judgement we any of us make
There seems to me to be a host of good reasons not to send back to Italy the young man who is currently the focus of a media frenzy, & mostly only bad ones for doing so
But to claim that his human rights somehow trump all other arguments adds only to the sum of human grief & anguish & causes irritation & annoyance to neutrals, people who would otherwise accept any decision to let him stay with sadness & equanimity
