23 March to 30 March

Who has the right to life?

Recently, during a conversation with a student of human rights from the University of Lund, I sought his view of the most important human rights issue at present. After some thought he answered, 'I think it's probably discrimination based on ethnicity.' This is a reasonable response, encompassing as it does, a range of issues, from impoliteness to people of other racial groups, to the ill treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and genocide in Darfur.

So what is today's most important human rights issue? Rather than discussing Josef's opinion when he shared it, I was surprised to find myself asking whether he thought it might be the fact that we live in a world in which around 25,000 children die every day as the result of '.poverty, hunger, easily preventable diseases and illnesses, and other related causes.' Afterwards, I wondered why we tend not to view this holocaust of preventable childhood deaths as a human rights issue, despite the prominence often given to the 'right to life'. I decided that self-deceit might play a part as we try to avoid the awful conclusion that as citizens of the world we share responsibility, because we offer less help than we could.

Gavin Fairbairn, Running Stream Professor of Ethics and Language, School of Applied Global Ethics