Upholding Human Dignity: A Literature Review

The Global Development sector, by and large, is focused on providing aid to countries globally through financial means and implementing projects to improve the lives of individuals across a variety of sectors. By doing so, the development sector seeks to directly influence human development which by nature, includes all aspects of the human experience. With humans being the center of focus in the development sector, respect for human dignity is a central theme in the field and is an oft-cited concept in the mission statements, vision statements, and guiding principles of a wide variety of development and humanitarian organizations. Despite this, human dignity is a somewhat nebulous concept that is loosely defined depending on the sector and the perspective from which it is being described, made even more so by noticeable lack of frameworks to operationalize the concept in practice. Additionally, a measurement for determining if and how human dignity is affected by actions in the development sector vary depending on context as well as the cultural setting under which human dignity is being explored. As part of the effort to develop measures of human dignity, the authors propose the following operational definition for human dignity: "Human dignity is the inherent value that every individual possesses equally by virtue of being a human being, independent of one’s abilities, characteristics, or actions." "Respect for human dignity is acknowledgement of that inherent value by individuals, institutions, and society."