Exchange to Change January 2018 E2C January 2018 web - Page 3

EDITO
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Growing universal
Jon Elster once remarked that healthy people are not just ready to act, their readiness to act also partly
stems from the illusion that their actions are also effective. Only depressed people seem to see themselves
as they really are: “to get it right, one has to sink into a depression”, but then, “of course, the depressed are
not very motivated to do anything”.
Would this apply to countries too, or even to continents? Take Europe, the self-proclaimed mother of
modernity. 69 years ago, our continent hosted the United Nations General Assembly in Paris to proclaim
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The preamble suggests the document’s ambition, as it
“proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement
for all peoples and all nations”. On 10 December 1948, that is, when many of these “peoples and nations”
were still to experience decolonization. Europe was clearly not depressed at the time: it was neither
inactive, nor marked by a lot of realism and self-awareness.
69 years and one day later, Amnesty International published its report on the fate of “Europe-bound
refugees and migrants” in Libya. The report tells the recent (hi)story of the current refugee crisis, it
documents different human smuggling routes from Sub-Saharan Africa up to the Mediterranean and, page
after page, it brings evidence of European actors’ involvement in practices of slavery, forced prostitution,
exploitation, beatings and torture. But again, Europe somehow manages to be busy with other things. It
responded to the first CNN images of slavery markets by increasing monitoring mechanisms in detention
centres in Libya, though Amnesty’s report unambiguously documents their ineffectiveness. The illusion of
control: Europe is anything but depressed.
I understand, countries are different from human beings, but not completely. Countries are governed by
political leaders who have taken up a mandate to lead and it is part and parcel of their political existence
that they exhibit at least a semblance of control. Delusional thinking is an unavoidable component of
political psychology.
And hence I wonder: how universal can the Declaration of Human Rights still be in the small valley
between the mountains of self-delusional ambition and depressive inaction?
To be continued, in real time.
Tom De Herdt
Chair
E xchange to change J anuary 2018