Nothing was more confusing in the IAI TV debate over Charlie Hebdo than the question of how to employ the language of rights. And nothing is more confused than the idea that there is a right to offend.

When I speak of the language of rights I don’t mean rights that the law giveth and the law taketh away – entitlements that vary from time to time or from one jurisdiction to another. I mean fundamental rights, rights we regard as universal and inalienable: human rights.

A fundamental (or human) right is a claim that each and every person, regardless of who they are, is entitled to make. But personal entitlement is not at the heart of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the main source of almost all modern human rights instruments. The UDHR was adopted by the United Nations in 1948, three years after World War Two ended and the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust were uncovered. Its preamble recalls “barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind”. Against this background the preamble puts forward an ethical vision based on “the inherent dignity … of all members of the human family”. Every right in the Declaration should be read in this light: humankind as a 'family', not as isolated individuals demanding their due. Thus Article 1: “All human beings … should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood” (or siblinghood, as we might say today). In other words, first and foremost comes mutual respect: respect for one another, for fellow “members of the human family”, respect for the “dignity and worth of the human person” (to quote another phrase from the preamble). I am tempted to say that ultimately it is this respect that puts the R in UDHR: it is the Universal Declaration of Human Respect. Rights and responsibilities are two sides of the same coin: mutual respect. This is the ethical vision underlying the language of fundamental rights.