HUMAN RIGHTS DAY: Your right to human dignity

19 March 2018 ,  Jaco Van den Berg 782

Section 10 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa provides for the right to human dignity: “Everyone has inherent dignity and the right to have their dignity respected and protected”. 

Human dignity is a central value of the objective, normative value system established by the Constitution. The right to human dignity is perhaps the pre-eminent value in our Constitution. The right to human dignity cannot be realised if all the other socio-economic rights are not realised.

Section 1 of the Constitution states that the Republic of South Africa is founded on the values of human dignity, the achievement of equality and the advancement of human rights and freedoms. Recognising a right to dignity is an acknowledgement of the intrinsic worth of human beings. Human beings are entitled to be treated as worthy of respect and concern.

The right to human dignity is the foundation of many of the other rights in the Bill of Rights. The Constitutional Court has described the rights to life and human dignity as the most important of all human rights.

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