Human Dignity and Human Rights

Abstract

Human dignity captures the notion that every human being is uniquely valuable and therefore ought to be accorded the highest respect and care. Although this concept has a long history in philosophical thinking, it emerged with great force in the aftermath of the Second World War, having since then been recognized by the international community as the foundation upon which human rights are based. Indeed, since 1948, international human rights law is explicitly grounded on the assumption that people do have equal basic rights (i.e., that they have equally valid claims to basic goods) because these latter derive from the dignity which is inherent in every human being.

Human dignity holds also a prominent position in the intergovernmental instruments relating to biomedicine that have been adopted since the end of the 1990s by bodies such as UNESCO, the United Nations, and, at the European level, the Council of Europe. Global bioethical standards combine, on the one hand, the appeal to human dignity as an overarching principle and, on the other hand, the recourse to human rights, which provide an effective and practical way forward for addressing bioethical issues at a transnational level.