Dignity and Human Rights

Hello and thanks for joining us today for a discussion with me, Jenifer Johnston and Professor Alan Miller, who’s the Chair of the Scottish Human Rights Commission.  Today we’re going to be talking about the concepts of Human Rights and Human Dignity and why they’re connected. 

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JJ:     Alan, could I start by asking you just about the historical connection between Human Dignity and Human Rights.

AM:     Yeah.  The bedrock of all of modern Human Rights lies with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which came into being in 1948 as a result of the first half of the last century, with two World Wars, the Great Depression, a Holocaust and a recognition across the world that we had to start to do a lot better and to set standards that we should all work to achieve.  And so the Universal Declaration was written up at that critical time in history and if you read the Universal Declaration and it’s the most translated document in the world then you see that before there’s any talk of Human Rights, dignity is the word that first appears and that’s because it is recognised that to be human means that you should be treated by everyone and by every government and institution in recognition of your humanity, that you have to be treated with respect for being human and cannot be dehumanised, cannot be made to be something less that the same as everyone else in the world.  And that also dignity was needed for each of us to fulfil our potential, to make the most of what we can be.  So that if you’re going to fulfil all of the human qualities and potential, you need to be properly nurtured, you need clothing, shelter, food, education.  You also need the capacity to give your opinions, to learn, to access information, to participate in all forms of society and not be discriminated against for any reason.  So dignity actually is the basis on which all of the Human Rights that we now talk about spring from and it’s also a word or a concept that everybody will sign up to.

JJ:        So what do Human Rights do specifically to protect Human Dignity?

AM:     What Human Rights does today in Scotland, is it will give this commonly embraced notion of dignity.  It will give it some definition.  It will give it some guarantee.  It will make sure that it actually happens everywhere for everyone. 

JJ:        So moving away from the concept of Human Dignity, what work is the Commission already undertaking and what examples could you give us of work you’ll be doing in the future?

AM:     Well, one of the very first things that I did when I became Chair of the Commission and actually before anyone else was in the Commission, was a thought that there were one or two areas that if we were going to hit the ground running, I should take some first steps to see what we might want to achieve and from my experience of working in and around Scotland, the experience of older persons and how they were treated in a lot of care settings left  a lot to be desired in terms of their dignity being respected and so we have done some scoping work.  We’ve listened, we’ve learned, we’ve gone out and about to find out just what these conditions are like.  We’ve talked to those who provide the care, those who regulate the institutions and settings of care and those who receive the care and we’ve been confirmed that this is an area that we think there is a role for the commission to raise the standards of treatment in order that the dignity of older persons in particular but not only, are better recognised and respected.

JJ:        The Scottish Human Rights Commission is obviously quite a small organisation.  Who will the Commission be working with in the future to deliver all this?

AM:     The Commission is a very modest body.  We have a very active and dedicated staff and Board of Commissioners, but we have ten staff and three part time commissioners and myself and a modest budget, so the only way we can have any real impact is to work with others, to be sometimes it’s the three Cs, to be a catalyst, a convener and a communicator.  So to bring into play all of the other bodies and individuals and institutions that have a stake in this and have either duties which they need to understand how they could perform better or rights as those who are receiving the care, that they know what their entitlements are and that they are empowered to claim these entitlements.  So the Commission will work with all of these different interested parties to raise standards in the way in which older persons in particular spend the latter parts of their lives.