The recognition of “human dignity” is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace. Thus the sovereign powers in this world by means of their drafted laws are struggling hard to achieve this “dignity” and observance of 10th of December every year is aligning with the global celebration of the adoption of UDHR., Noor UL Shahbaz
Noor UL Shahbaz
The Universal Declaration on Human Rights was pivotal in popularizing the use of ‘dignity’ or ‘human dignity’ in human rights discourses. The concept of dignity largely means ‘status’. Honour and respect should be accorded to someone who is worthy of that honour and respect because of a particular status that he or she had. For example the phenomenon of appointment to a particular public office brings with it dignity. In this use of dignity, man is contrasted with animals: it is vitally necessary for us to remember always how vastly superior is man’s nature to that of cattle and other animals; their only thought is for bodily satisfaction, Man’s mind, on the contrary, is developed by study and reflection. From this we may learn that sensual pleasure is wholly unworthy of the dignity of the human race. Taken in this way, where human beings are regarded as having a certain worth by virtue of being human, the concept of human dignity raises important questions such as, what kind of beings are we? How do we appropriately express the kind of beings we are? Radically different answers are possible.
When we debate about the relationship between God and Man, the idea of ‘dignity’ must be used as the way of distinguishing between man and other creatures. We can emphasize the idea of mankind as having dignity because the soul of human is a spark of light of God thus distinguishing man from other creatures. The expression ‘inherent dignity of man’ defines the ‘status’ of man. He is the only creature on earth that God has willed to otherwise the angels had put a word forward, and he alone is called to share by knowledge and love God’s own sovereignty. It was for this end that he was created, and this is the fundamental reason for his dignity. Being a spark of light of God the human individual possesses the dignity of a person, who is not just something, but someone who has been best titled “ashraf-ul-makhlook. He is capable of self-knowledge, of self-possession and of freely giving himself and entering into communion with other persons. And he is called by grace to a covenant with his Creator, to offer him a response of faith and love that no other creature can give in his stead.
One of the most important of the gifts of God to human being was the gift of ‘reason’. This human reason therefore is interconnected with the idea of dignity that this race deserves. We can argue that at the root of Man’s dignity is the ability to choose, and that this is a gift from God. ‘It is given to him to have that which he chooses and to be that which he wills.’ Human’s have now moved more squarely to the central existential claim of modernity – man’s autonomy, his capacity to be lord of his fate and the shaper of his future. The concept of dignity came to be used in the present times as well as a rallying cry for a variety of other social and political movements advocating specific types of social reform and the beginning we have witnessed from different socio-political and democratic systems was “give him food and shelter, when you have covered his nakedness, dignity will follow by itself”. The era of enlightenment justified the abolition of slavery as a ‘shameless violation of human dignity’ and laws perpetuating it as ‘sacrilege’. The idea of ‘dignity of labour’ and to mobilize the working classes to argue with the employer class including state to provide social welfare is upholding the status and thus ‘dignity’ of a human being. Dignity as a fact as well as a moral entitlement was brought into practical international politics in the post – Second World War period. This was a view of human rights that viewed rights not as espousing radical ethical individualism but rather as essential for the promotion of the common good of human beings with the aid and assistance of United Nations Organisation as the global architect.
Despite its relative prominence in the history of ideas, it was not until the first half of the 20th century, however, that dignity began to enter legal, and particularly constitutional and international legal, discourse in any particularly sustained way. The use of dignity in legal texts, in the sense of referring to human dignity as inherent in Man, comes in the first three decades of the 20th century. Several countries in Europe and the Americas incorporated the concept of dignity in their constitutions: in 1917 Mexico; in 1919 Weimar Germany and Finland; in 1933 Portugal; in 1937 Ireland; and in 1940 Cuba. Though growing, this constitutional use of dignity remained pretty marginal, however, until the end of the Second World War. It was not surprising, perhaps, that of the new national constitutions which incorporated dignity between 1945 and 1950, three of the most prominent (Japan, Italy, and Germany) were of defeated nations of the Second World War responsible for a substantial part of the horrors that the human rights movement was aiming to eradicate. In 1946 Japan, in 1948 Italy, and in 1949 West Germany incorporated dignity in the constitutional documents. The movement to incorporate dignity into new constitutions was, however, by no means confined to European and Latin American states; in 1950 the Constitution of India did likewise. UDHR is a milestone document proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in Paris on 10th December 1948 (GA Resolution 217 A) as a common standard of achievements for all peoples and all nations. The preamble sets out that recognition of “human dignity” is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace. Thus the sovereign powers in this world by means of their drafted laws are struggling hard to achieve this “dignity” and observance of 10th of December every year is aligning with the global celebration of the adoption of UDHR.
Noor UL Shahbaz (M.A, LL.M [Gold Medallist] is Lecturer in Law & Former Acting Principal at Sopore Law College, can be reached at im1415151819@gmail.com,
