DescriptWORTH or value means that every life matters. No person is dispensable or disposable. Every life has worth and meaning. A person must be treated “as a person” because that means something; it means that a person can not be treated “inhumanely” – that is, as if they were not a person. Worth is the essential quality of dignity.ion text goes here

UNIVERSAL refers to the fact that every person, in past, present and future generations has equal dignity. This is consistent with some religious versions of dignity (e.g. Q’ranic recognition of the dignity of all the children of Adam) but is inconsistent with some historic understandings of dignity that associated it with people of high rank who had certain immunities and privileges due to their status or station. The UDHR changed how we think about dignity: now, the universality of equal dignity is recognized in human rights law throughout the world.on text goes here

INHERENT refers to the fact that dignity is innate, born with the human person. It is not granted or defined by the state or by any other person or entity.

BODILY INTEGRITY relates specifically to the control that each person must have over their own body. This is why torture, rape, medical experimentation and other attacks on a person’s body offend dignity and can never be countenanced. This is why even voyeurism is prohibited under the Prison Rape Elimination Act (see Chapter 4, III.A.2 below). The body is the physical incarnation of human dignity. Violations of bodily integrity also impair other aspects of human dignity. As the Colombian Constitutional Court has recounted, “the elimination of violence against women is a condition that is indispensable for her individual social development and her full and equal participation in all the spheres of life.”158

BELONGING implicates the aspect of dignity that recognizes that no individual lives alone and that our identities are bound up with others. The South African Constitutional Court has been among the most articulate in expounding what we have elsewhere called “the dignity of belonging:” “Every individual is an extension of others.... ‘an individual human person cannot develop and achieve the fullness of his/her potential without the concrete act of relating to other individual persons.’ This thinking emphasises the importance of community to individual identity and hence to human dignity. Dignity and identity are inseparably linked as one’s sense of self-worth is defined by one’s identity.”

CITIZENSHIP is more than the formal status of state citizenship. Sometimes, rights are granted only to citizens, with the result that children or people who are migrating who may not have full citizenship status, are denied certain fundamental rights such as the right to vote or the right to work or study. However, every person has equal human dignity, so even those who are not citizens nonetheless always retain the right to have their dignity respected, including the right to participate in society.

HUMAN DIGNITY is the quality of inherent worth that each “member of the human family” has in equal measure with every other. In the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), it comes from the human capacity for reason and conscience and thus animates the human capacity to make decisions, including decisions about oneself and one’s life.

INALIENABLE means that no government or authority may take away a person’s dignity. It can be disrespected or “dented,” but it can not be eliminated or denied. Another way of saying this is that there is no legitimate basis for a person’s dignity to be denied.

. EQUALITY and dignity are intimately interconnected but they are not identical. Dignity means that each person has worth and equal dignity means that each person has worth that is equal. Dignity must be distributed in equal measure because if it were not, then some people could decide how much other people’s dignity is worth, and is worth respecting, if at all. The UDHR’s lesson learned from the Holocaust is that no person can define the worth of another. (See “indignities” below).

PARTICIPATORY DIGNITY refers to that aspect of human dignity that permits (or requires) engagement in political decision-making in one’s community at the local, national, regional, or international levels. Participatory dignity guarantees the set of rights associated with political authority, including rights to free expression, association, voting, and running for office. Limitations on voting rights especially impair this aspect of dignity.

EMPATHY, RESPECT, COMPASSION, GENEROSITY, and similar terms describe the interpersonal relationships that a culture of dignity invites. To treat a person with dignity is to have and express these sentiments. But dignity is far more than these interpersonal forms of connection.

FREE AND FULL DEVELOPMENT OF THE PERSONALITY is sometimes given as the purpose of dignity; also thought of as human flourishing. This imposes on the state the obligation to treat each person “as a person,” as an individual. It protects the zone of privacy that allows the person to distinguish themselves from others and to protect themselves from government over-reaching. Education is particularly pertinent to this aspect of dignity, and should include not only vocational education, but educational opportunities that are broad enough to allow a person to grow and thrive and flourish.

AGENCY and AUTONOMY are two similar but distinct terms. ‘Agency’ means the capacity to make decisions. ‘Autonomy’ means the capacity to make rules for oneself; it has a more individualistic nuance. While humans should have agency over themselves, they live in community with others and therefore do not live autonomously. Agency recognizes each person’s right to control their own life but we prefer it to autonomy because it accommodates the communal. As the Indian Supreme Court has said, “The right to choose for oneself – be it as significant as choosing the course of one’s life or as mundane as one’s day-to-day activities – forms a part of the right to dignity.”156

PRIVACY is related to the free development of the personality and to agency, but it also relates to what Justice Douglas called “the zone of privacy” that was protected by various rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights. It demarcates the lines of individual personhood. The zone of privacy, or zone of dignity, protects not only decisional agency about one’s life choices, but also the right to not self-incriminate, rights relating to what we choose to say or choose not to say, and other rights of conscience that protect our personhood.157