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Human rights as guarantees of cultural diversity

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The defence of cultural diversity is an ethical imperative, inseparable from respect for human dignity. It implies a commitment to human rights and fundamental freedoms, in particular the rights of persons belonging to minorities and those of indigenous peoples.

No one may invoke cultural diversity to infringe upon human rights guaranteed by international law, nor to limit their scope.

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Tanella Boni - Bio

Tanella Boni, born in Côte d’Ivoire, is a French-speaking poet, novelist and critic. She has been a professor of philosophy at the University of Cocody in Abidjan. Her research focuses on culture and cultural diversity, human rights, and women’s rights in particular. In 2005 she received the Ahmadou Kourouma Prize for her novel Matins de couvre-feu, and in 2009 she was awarded the Antonio Viccaro International Prize for Poetry.

What is human dignity?

The word dignitas is hard to define and refers sometimes to the respect a human being deserves, sometimes to the respect due to oneself.

Nowadays, in all areas of life, it is the lack of human dignity that is problematic. From the law to politics via philosophy, economics, medicine and the new information and communication technologies, approaches to human dignity are as diverse as the cultures, knowledge and beliefs that feed into the debates. Nevertheless, above and beyond the many viewpoints, we are talking about humanity, its present and future, not an abstract humanity but one that is embodied in the ‘human person’ in the singular.

Humanity is not solely, as we might think, being separated from nature, the privilege of an all-conquering reason, with the benefit of science and technology. It is not the gradual transition to an increasingly elevated culture and mind, maybe to a ‘civilization’ from which we could classify all the other cultures.

Human dignity is first of all the dignity of the body, alive or dead. However, attacks on the integrity of the body are many: from slavery to genocide via the fate meted out to illegal immigrants, asylum-seekers, refugees and those without official papers. In a world where every relationship, in order to be viable, enters into the ‘system of goods’ where everything is bought and sold, human dignity is in ‘the category of the priceless.

Human dignity is a value in itself because it speaks of the human, like certain cultures where giving your word is another type of contract with a ‘human face’ which has an ethical and not a political or legal character.

In a particular situation a person is never conscious of their own dignity except through the other’s actions: the other’s look, the changes the other makes them undergo as if they were an object, the travails the other puts them through. To conclude, human dignity – the idea, the principle, the requirement – is manifest in every human relationship from the first glance, the first word, the first encounter as a mutual recognition of one another.