La fragilidad de los derechos

The world of middle-class security, based on freedom that depended on that security, was a failure that eventually led to the two World Wars. It was only possible to reach the agreement enshrined in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights by scorning and trampling on fragile human rights. The Declaration was a quest for a balance between freedom and security, in the interests of maintaining peace. But that balance has been upset by recent events, first 11 September and then 11 May. We are now back to the primacy of security over freedom. The axiom that it is worth losing freedom and democracy for the sake of security has become widespread. The sacrifices made and the need for general agreement have been forgotten. Human rights have been adapted to support collateral damage. The process of regression must be stopped, also because our national legal systems are being influenced by a negative sense of otherness, which is now generally taken to be the enemy that has come to destroy our common identity. That is why it is not enough the rebuild the constitutional state governed by the rule of law: we must recalibrate the terms of rights and citizenship: rights have to go back to being fundamental and citizenship has to become cosmopolitan.

José Calvo Gonzàlez, La fragilidad de los derechos in "SOCIOLOGIA DEL DIRITTO " 2/2006, pp , DOI: