The Human Rights Movement

Academic research combined with a diplomatic life serving her homeland Norway and the Holy See, enable Janne Haaland Matláry to delve deeply into the internationalization of human rights and the question of human dignity in her When Might Becomes Right: Essays on Democracy and the Crisis of Rationality.

In her review of the book, Mary Anne Glendon (Harvard), wrote:

The book, ‘When might becomes human right’, has been described as essential reading for all who are concerned with issues of rationality, law, human rights, politics and religious freedom in European democracy today.

Janne Haaland Matláry has devoted her life to questions of ethics and politics. This preoccupation has become extraordinarily relevant to many of the issues that dominate the contemporary political agenda; particularly in Europe where the debate over relativism, human rights and majority tyranny has become a vital concern to very many of its citizens. As an academic, studying and teaching political science, her work has concentrated on security and foreign policy.

Janne Haaland Matláry is Professor of International Politics in the Department of Political Science of the University of Oslo, Norway, and Senior Adjunct Researcher in Security Policy at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs. She was State Secretary for Foreign Affairs (Deputy Foreign Minister) of Norway 1997–2000, representing the Christian Democratic Party in the Bondevik government. Her main academic fields are the European Union and international security policy. She has published very widely and played significant roles in a number of international and consultative bodies. In April 2007 she was awarded Il Premio San Benedetto. Her biographical narrative of conversion to the Catholic Church, Faith Through Reason, is also published by Gracewing.

She makes a strong case that foundations for human rights can be found through human reason, specifically, through retrieving and reanimating the classical tradition of rationalism that was once the pride of western civilization … She builds her analysis of politics with far more promising materials than the instrumental rationality and the radically individualistic concept of the person that have prevented the human rights movement thus far from reaching its full potential.

To read other comments on the crisis detailed in Matláry's book, go here.

Children are the prime target of International Human Rights indoctrination. The first Youth for Human Rights International project was done in coordination with Irving Sarnoff, Founder and Director of Friends of the United Nations. It was held in 2001 in conjunction with the European Marathon for Human Rights, which was coordinated by the Church of Scientology and the International Foundation for Human Rights and Tolerance. When children were invited from across Europe to write essays on human rights, the words that most often appeared were "tolerance", "happiness" and "world peace". The materials used for educating the world's children are largely developed by the Church of Scientology, based on the founder's teaching: "On the day we can fully trust each other there will be peace on earth."