Totalitarian systems contemptuous of human rights are growing stronger just as the shaky foundations of natural law and natural rights are being exposed, creating what a pioneering scholar of religious studies describes as a ‘a very dangerous crisis’

What comes first, principles or interests, ethics or profits? In its leading article on 1 August, The Tablet described this as “the crux of the moral issue” underlining the government’s merging of the Department for International Development into the Foreign Office. What are the principles that ought to prevail over economic self-interest, and where are they to be found?

The leader writer argues that member states of the United Nations are under an obligation to subscribe, not just to the broad provisions of the UN Charter, but also to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

“Such rights are universal, flowing from natural law, and do not depend on local laws for their existence,” the leader argued (citing the influence of the Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain on the drafting of the text). “They apply everywhere, regardless of culture, race and ideology in particular places. These rights are not a ‘Western’ invention nor a neo-colonial imposition, but derive from the very definition of what it is to be human.”