Haman said to King Ahasuerus, 'There is a certain unassimilated nation scattered among the other nations throughout the provinces of your realm; their laws are different from those of all the other nations, and the royal laws they ignore; hence it is not in the king's interests to tolerate them.
Esther 3:8

Haman's claim has been made — and will continue to be — at various times in history. (It's eery isn't it? You'd almost swear that Scripture, by picking out the details of a single local historical incident of passing interest, is in fact trying to show us what is going to keep coming up in the future.) The beginnings of another Haman can be seen in Europe now, in the way that its human rights legislation is being interpreted.

Is there something wrong with human rights? Certainly not; a century of dictators has shown the necessity of protecting individuals against states. But rights can be in tension. Especially between individuals and groups. Protecting individuals against the misusable power of states may also incidentally give individuals powers against all other kinds of groups. And it's not clear that that kind of protection must always be for good. Society is made up of various kinds of groups (and I am being intentionally vague; groups could mean families, unions, religions, or anything). Without groups, there simply is no society.

So, human rights legislation has, for understandable historical reasons, been strongly biased in the favor of individuals. But without a balancing of the rights of groups, it can go wrong. Very wrong indeed. An example is a recent report made by the "E.U. Network of Independent Experts on Fundamental Rights". That's a body of experts (one per member state) created by the European Commission, and given the task of reporting, and advising to the European Commission on, issues of human rights in Europe. They write reports.

Recently they reported on an issue of interest to Catholics: a draft treaty between the state of Slovakia (which is 70% Catholic) and the Holy See. The treaty would provide protection for freedom of conscience on issues relating to human life and family life, since Catholic teaching insists that no one may ever be forced to act against their conscience. As accurately stated in a report given in the Guardian, a U. K. paper:

The treaty would allow healthcare workers in hospitals founded by the Catholic church to refuse to perform abortions or carry out fertility treatment on "conscience" grounds if they believe such work conflicts with their faith.

(Note the quotation marks on one of the words. Something about that particular word so upset the reporter that it had to be fenced off from the rest of his sentence.)

So, the Network of experts immediately went to work finding out reasons why freedom of conscience should be limited, because while the ability to have an abortion may be legal in some countries, it was blatantly clear to the experts that if no one could be found who didn't object on grounds of conscience, then the ability to have an abortion would be restricted. And since this particular act was legal, the experts somehow claimed that it was a fundamental human right for help to be given to anyone who wished to perform that act. But then how to overcome the right to conscientious objection?

The experts went about it in a way which solves the problem to their thinking, but which actually very substantially negates the principle of conscientious objection. And they did not seem to notice. They said:

In the view of the Network, this implies that the State concerned must ensure, first, that an effective remedy should be open to challenge any refusal to provide abortion; second, that an obligation will be imposed on the health care practitioner exercising his or her right to religious conscientious objection to refer the woman seeking abortion to another qualified health care practitioner who will agree to perform the abortion; third, that another qualified health care practitioner will be indeed available, including in rural areas or in areas which are geographically remote from the centre. Such a regulation should thus accommodate the right to religious conscientious objection, which is derived from the freedom of religion, while ensuring that the exercise of this right will not lead to others either being deprived of access to certain services in principle available to all in the State concerned, or being treated in a discriminatory fashion.

Notice the second remedy (highlighted by me). The experts have allowed conscientious objection to only apply to the actual performance of the act, and negated any conscientious objection to any surrounding action which promotes the act. But the human conscience is simply not limited in that way. For example: you can be sure that it would be vastly against my conscience to actively take part in killing all the members of a particular race; but it would be equally against my conscience to help you by providing you with a list of their names and addresses. It does not appear that the Network of experts would agree with such a principle.

One would almost get the impression that the experts juggled with the various issues of rights and conscience until they came up with their desired answer. The Holy See, of course, did not miss this principle. In speaking in the draft Slovakian Treaty of the acts that the Holy See wished to see protected, it defined that:

The term “to act” includes participating in an act or any other activity of unspecified duration connected with such act, including assistance.

Other parts of the report given by the Network of experts raise other interesting issues. The experts bring up the case of what kind of restrictions can be imposed on someone being hired (by, say, the Catholic Church), and they point out that:

insofar as such a requirement could be seen as difference in treatment based on the opinions of the job applicant on issues such as, e.g., the legitimacy of abortion or the acceptability of homosexuality, it should be recalled that any discrimination on grounds of political opinion should be prohibited, as required by Article 26 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

In other words, if a Catholic school was looking to hire a teacher, then the fact that the teacher was actively involved in Planned Parenthood (or the European equivalent — which would be the state), then it would be illegal to take that into account. Because it was a political opinion, and thus a protected human right, and not relevant to issues of employment. In this case, any rights of parents to control what their children are taught are resolutely ignored — the individual wins out against the group. Seemingly another case where the experts come up with the desired answer taking into account only some of the rights.