Dignidade da pessoa humana : mecanismos de proteção

Abstract

The present dissertation addresses the issue of human dignity and the mechanisms to protect the rights that come from this condition inherent to mankind. Initially, a brief retrospective of the evolution of the concept of human dignity throughout the history of philosophical thinking is made. Then, it’s made an analysis of the circumstances that led to the international community becoming aware of the need to protect human dignity, which occurred with greater emphasis after the atrocities committed during World War II. As a result of international awareness of this need, mechanisms were created to ensure this protection, such as the creation of the UN and international courts to prosecute and judge crimes committed against human dignity. Regarding the UN, the focus of the dissertation was humanitarian interventions. The analysis starts with an attempt to locate the remote beginning of humanitarian interventions, as well as their justifications. The interventions had their moral basis in the old Just War theory, which was reintroduced by some authors in favor of the interventions. In order to understand the moral justification for breaking the principle of non-intervention, a brief analysis of the thoughts on just war from the perspective of Immanuel Kant, Michael Walzer, Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls, among others, was made. The conclusion regarding the effectiveness of humanitarian interventions was, in short, that the use of violence against violence does not appear to be the best way out of conflicts that put human dignity at risk, given the chance of making the situation worse. Therefore, it has been concluded that there is a need to reevaluate the UN’s actions, through a peace agenda based on the United Nations Charter, with the aim of achieving peaceful solutions to conflicts, postponing the use of interventions for extreme cases in which a peaceful solution, after all attempts, was not effective.