"Human rights are characterized by their universality— all human beings have these rights by the fact of being human— and by their absolute character, as well as by their resistance to all violation. These attributes cannot be based on moral relativism; they implicitly contain the formulation of a claim to moral objectivity." Or so claimed Juan Cianciardo, a researcher with thing Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas de Argentina (CONICET), Argentina's national research system, who also coordinated the conference "Practical Reason, autonomy and fundamental rights" organized by the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) of the University of Navarra.

It is a fact that the protection of fundamental rights varies greatly from one country to another in this world. A key to the progress of rights, according to Professor Cianciardo, can be found in the coordination of a "a policy of rights" between states: "There are good examples of juridical systems that have been rehabilitated and have evolved from situations of injustice to a situation of greater justice through the actions of other states.

Among them, he mentioned the case of Alberto Fujimori, president of Peru between 1990 and 2000: "He renounced the jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which led to his isolation on an international scale and left him very weak."

In line with the latter, the CONICET researcher noted that an "interesting bet" can be made on strengthening regional systems of recognition, protection and promotion of fundamental rights, such as the European and Inter-American systems. "We are witnessing the emergence of ‘neo-conventionalism,' a phenomenon characterized by the internationalization of the sources of rights and the courts charged with interpreting them. This gives them greater strength and allows for higher quality, technical-juridical treatment that is less tied to politics, to party politics or to ideological distortion."

The philosophical foundation of human rights

Juan Cianciardo's presentation at the conference was titled, ‘The doctrine of double effect and the foundation of human rights.' In it, he explained how the principle of proportionality, which requires that laws passed by a legislature be regulated so that they "proportion" fundamental rights, has some points in common with the classical doctrine of double effect. "The rationale for the proportionality principle coincides with the rationale for double effect: the juridical-moral requirements of the former and the moral requirements of the latter for recognizing the absolute nature of human rights and moral absolutes respectively. As a result, the meaning of the principle as a whole is born out in the possibility of escaping or transcending a mere balance of costs and benefits."

For the Argentine specialist, philosophy plays a key role in sustaining the theory and discourse on human rights. "Only philosophy is capable of providing a solid basis for the concepts of dignity and human nature. Without a solid foundation, rights are reduced to flags of political struggle, to instruments that are permeable to strategic reason and ideology."

In this regard, he appealed to enriching them with a vision of the classical doctrine of natural law: "Faced with problems of coordination, the only humane alternative is juridical, which treats the other and the subject as an end in itself, not merely as a means, and allows the person to turn their ambition into a good, which increases their being."

Juan Cianciardo is one of twenty experts who participated in the "Practical reason, autonomy and rights" conference on the 12-13 of March, which was organized by ICS's Natural Law and Practical Reason project. Other participants included professors from the Austral University (Argentina), the University of Birmingham (UK), the University of Leeds, the University of Navarra School of Law and the Institute for Culture and Society.

"Practical reason, autonomy and fundamental rights have been gaining importance in legal debates, mainly as a result of the increasing role of the constitution of legal systems," as Professor Cianciardo claimed. Two main points united the various presentations, including: autonomy in relation to the theory of action and juridical action, as well as the relationship between moral principles, juridical principles and juridical rules.

Some of the topics covered include "Power, truth, law, judges: Have they made legal proceedings a blind machinery?" "On the distinction between ‘killing' and ‘being responsible for killing:' More than a linguistic question," "Self-determination, dignity and fundamental rights," and "The cognitive challenges of concrete interpretation: Between the intelligibility of language and the intelligibility of action.