Answer

As with Exercise 1, there is no proper answer! You may well have placed ‘the right to life’ at the very top of your list of priorities, for without life, other rights may be meaningless. On the other hand, you may have given top place to ‘the right to take part in religious worship’ if your religious faith is such that your belief in the sanctity of life also involves acceptance of (and is subordinate to) a higher duty to a deity.Assume, though, that you are living in a war zone where widespread deprivation of life is constantly taking place. Would you be tempted to place the ‘right to a peaceful existence free from armed conflict’ at the top of your list? What this is getting at is that how we view ‘human rights’, and what we regard as the most important human rights, may well be dependent upon our economic, social and political situation.

Exercise 3 - Try exercises 1 and 2 again (use a separate table for each by clicking on the hyperlink of each society). Now, though, assume you are living in three very different societies:

Society 1 : A mature and stable democracy which has a high standard of living, little poverty, and good social services for the homeless.

Society 2 : A developing territory which is in the throes of an armed struggle for independence which has caused much destruction of housing and much loss of life.

Society 3 : A stable society without many natural resources which is under a totalitarian (one-party) government whose avowed purpose is to provide a minimum standard of material well-being for all of its citizens.

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Protecting Human Rights in Europe