5 - Human Dignity in Human Rights Law

Summary

Chapter Five charts human dignity in its second constitutive stage, characterized by the rise of international human rights law. Its first expressions in the 1920s (which echoed developments in connection with slave trade and slavery in the nineteenth century) and later in 1944 (with the Philadelphia Declaration), must be considered in the light of the decisive adoption of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, in 1948, and the adoption of the Convention against Genocide later that year. But it is difficult to consider these entry points, however important, as sufficient for the consolidation of human dignity in the form of human ‘rights’. In earnest, the consolidation process was not completed until the adoption of the two human rights Covenants in 1966, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).