Author: Ophelia Benson

The Cairo Declaration differs sharply from the Universal Declaration overall in its emphatic rejection of universalism, in rejecting the UD’s ‘without exception’ in favour of firm, decided exceptions. In the detail, the CD differs from the UD in its avoidance of clarity, precision and openness and hence accountability and reliability. The Cairo Declaration injects exceptions into its concept of human rights, without spelling out exactly what they entail; this introduces a whole new element of doubt, uncertainty and fear into what is supposed to be a human rights document. Worse, it presents itself as a human rights document (of sorts) when in fact it puts anyone who subscribes to it in the position of (perhaps unknowingly) endorsing laws, restrictions and punishments that are human rights violations rather than human rights.

The raison d’être of the Cairo Declaration is the idea that the Universal Declaration is not in fact universal – that it is ‘Western’ and Judeo-Christian, that it does not work for non-Western cultures, that it ‘could not be implemented by Muslims,’ in the words of the Iranian representative to the UN. So by comparing the two and finding how they differ it is possible to figure out what – in the view of the people who drew up the Cairo Declaration and those who signed on to it, at least – can be ‘implemented by Muslims.’

We find out, generally, via Articles 24 and 25, that all rights are subject to Sharia, and via the Cairo Declaration as a whole, we find out that the authors are willing to make human rights subordinate to Sharia without ever spelling out what that could mean, what it presumably means, what in many countries governed by Sharia it in fact does mean. The Cairo Declaration doesn’t mention stoning to death for adultery, or the death penalty for apostasy, or forced marriage, or child marriage, or guardian laws, or laws forbidding women to travel, work, or go to school without male permission. The Cairo Declaration rejects the Universal Declaration, and stands out for its own version of human rights, yet it does it in a secretive way.

In fact it is difficult not to conclude that the authors of the Cairo Declaration did not start with first principles and attempt to create the best human rights document they could, but rather that they started with existing regimes and legal codes in existing majority-Muslim countries, and then wrote the Cairo Declaration so that it would match the existing laws – adding 24 and 25 at the end in case they’d left anything out. This is bad enough, and the fact that this is done without transparency makes it even worse. The Cairo Declaration takes a declaration of rights that is, deliberately, as clear and open and explicit as possible, and renders it vague instead of precise, obscure instead of clear, tacit instead of explicit. It injects an element – a large element – of uncertainty, blurring, non-precision, danger, threat; in article after article, it merely invokes Sharia without saying what that means. With the Universal Declaration we know where we are and with the Cairo Declaration we don’t – the rights are limited, and in ways that are not specified or spelled out. The Universal Declaration is both general and specific; the Cairo Declaration is particular where the Universal Declaration is general and vague where the UD is precise.

The result is that the Cairo Declaration does away with the transparency, clarity, and specificity and hence the accountability and also the confidence. With the Universal Declaration it is easy to understand what is meant. With the Cairo Declaration, repeatedly, there is a trap door: an impossibility of knowing what is meant. We go from open, clear, spelled out intentions, which are clearly meant to maximize the well-being of all people, without exceptions, to secretive, cryptic, frightening stipulations whose benevolence is by no means clear.

A Vatican spokesman in the shape of a priest (a celibate male, in other words) called the open letter to the pope ‘paid propaganda to promote the use of contraceptives’. Well, yes: it was paid in the sense that it was a paid advertisement in the Corriere della Sera and it was propaganda in the sense that it was an attempt at persuasion – but nevertheless calling it that is 1. somewhat tendentious and 2. a bad joke coming from the not exactly unpaid Vatican which spends quite a lot of time and effort on its own propaganda, well backed up with commands which are in turn backed up with threats of excommunication and burning in hell for eternity. And then, ‘Father’ Federico Lombardi isn’t going to have to live with the consequences of any unwanted pregnancy or any sexually transmitted disease that comes into being as a result of the Vatican’s paid propaganda to forbid the use of contraceptives – unless of course he’s a celibate priest in name only. Either way there is and always has been something very repellent about the Vatican’s passion to impose conditions on other people that it is itself exempt from. It is of course a great deal more repellent that the Vatican is so irresponsible about this – that it insists on pretending to think that an invented theological scruple about contraception is worth imposing involuntary childbirth and childrearing on millions upon millions of women all over the planet. The disproportion there is disgusting. Does the Vatican even stop to think, to name just one obvious item, of the parents who have to see their children die of starvation or malnutrition or malaria or diarrhea or other childhood diseases because the parents have more children than they can raise in healthy conditions? If it does, it doesn’t act on the thinking. The Vatican is an arbitrary authoritarian heedless callous essentially frivolous outfit that preens itself on bogus moral scruples while causing real (and appalling) suffering on poor people in their millions. The Vatican has a nerve, and so does its spokesman.

“First and foremost,” said Fr. Lombardi, “the authors are a part of a number of groups that are well known for their dissenting positions which are not limited to the mere teaching of marital morality but are also concerned with many other subjects (for instance the ordination of women) and that therefore for some time have been against the Magisterium of the Church.”

Yeah. And for good reason. The ordination of men-only just perpetuates this arrangement where unmarried men impose absurd laws on women while remaining immune themselves. The ‘Magisterium of the Church’ is a racket, and a sadistic one at that.

Above all, the Vatican’s spokesman highlighted that the letter “does not remotely broach the true issue that is at the heart of the Humanae Vitae, i.e. the connection among the human and spiritual relation between husband and wife, the practice of sexuality as its expression, and its fecundity.” In the “letter,” pointed out Fr. Lombardi, “the word ‘love’ never appears. It seems the groups that wrote the letter are not interested in it at all. It seems the only hope of the couples and the world lies in contraception alone.”

What true issue? What true issue is that? What about its ‘fecundity’? What makes you think the Vatican is interested in ‘love’? What makes you think ordering people to risk pregnancy every time they have sex somehow produces more ‘love’ in the world? What makes you think it doesn’t work exactly the other way? Why do you skate right past the obvious likelihood that an intentional pregnancy is much more likely to lead to a loved child than an inadvertent one is? Anyone would think that the Vatican had never heard there are incompetent or unkind parents in the world, and that it’s safer to improve the odds than it is to worsen them.

After all, concluded Lombardi, “it’s clear it is not an article that expresses a theological or moral position, it is paid propaganda to promote the use of contraceptives. One should also wonder who paid for it and why.”

Okay – and who paid for Lombardi? And why?