Eleven November is a date noted throughout the Western world as a symbol for the end of conflict and reverence for sacrifice. In an increasingly secular world, the power of that symbol as something transcendental has waned. Human rights protections, driven by notions of human dignity, have also been born of war and atrocities that one wishes were unimaginable, yet that somehow were not only imagined but executed by real people against other real people, too often, and on too great a scale.
As respect for freedom of conscience, religion and belief threatens to yield to safer, more convenient and more politically acceptable ways of thinking, the foundation of all human rights threatens to be undermined, as foundations of shoddy workmanship fail to match those of solid making.
Today the European Court of Human Rights stands apart from other institutions in its power, potential, and global influence for human rights protection. The Strasbourg Consortium (and this newsletter) seeks a modest role in helping the Court, and those touched by it, to anchor in all of us the perspective that freedom of conscience, religion, and belief are the essence of all rights that assume the dignity of humankind: whether freedom from torture and slavery, wrongful discrimination, or any of the other forms of abuse that have troubled our past as persons and peoples.
The Court reaffirms this perspective with each new decision, in addressing, for example, such issues as procreative rights that stand at life’s inception as in S.H. and Others v. Austria reported here, or with the seating of a new president or new judges selected from among persons of integrity, experience and knowledge, as announced in this edition of the Newsletter.
In that vein we express our respect for and gratitude to outgoing Court President Jean-Paul Costa even as we offer our welcome and support to Sir Nicolas Bratza as he assumes the presidency of the Court and congratulate his colleagues new to the Court or to new positions on the Court. These men and women will be among those most influential in this generation in perpetuating in 11/11/11 the symbol of sacrifice, renewal and reverence born of 11/11/18 and remembered every year since with the hope for what humankind can be.