We all have human rights

The European Convention on Human Rights is a living instrument evolving with societal changes. Human rights can appear nebulous concepts, especially in the media. People know they have them but do not know their intricacies. Oscar Wilde, in his play Vera, or the Nihilists (1880), prophetically encapsulates this: ‘In the old times men carried out their rights for themselves as they lived, but nowadays every baby seems born with a social manifesto in its mouth much bigger than itself’. However, fairness, respect, equality, dignity and autonomy, which form a human rights-based approach, should be ubiquitous concepts easily applied in practice.