The Role of National legislation and International Agreements in Protection the Right to Human Dignity (A Study in Human Rights)

Abstract

The right to human dignity is one of the important personal rights closely linked to the human personality and is the foundation of all rights, as life cannot be sustained with restrictions, shackles, and the squandering of human dignity. Therefore, we see that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights stated in its preamble: "(Individuals are born free and equal in dignity and rights)." This declaration placed dignity before rights, and this imposes several obligations on states to protect this right. The research was therefore limited to the extent to which relevant international and national legislation are concerned with providing legal protection for the individual's right to human dignity, relying on the descriptive and analytical approach to legal texts, which were somewhat consistent with international agreements, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 and the two International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 1966. These imposed an obligation on states to provide legal protection to all individuals through their constitutions or related laws, including the Iraqi Penal Code No. (111 of 1969), the enforced Human Organ Transplant and Anti-Trafficking Law (No. 11 of 2016), and the enforced Iraqi Anti-Human Trafficking Law No. (28 of 2012), and other international agreements and domestic laws aimed at protecting human dignity by prohibiting torture, inhuman, cruel, or degrading treatment that violates human dignity, or exposure to the human body or corpse, or their conscription, or assault, or forcing them into compulsory labor.