Dignity and the Deprivation of Liberty

Descripción del proyecto

Interpretación de la dignidad en la detención

La dignidad es un valor fundamental de los derechos humanos. No obstante, su significado práctico sigue siendo objeto de debate, en particular en virtud del artículo 3 del Convenio Europeo de Derechos Humanos. En este sentido, el proyecto DOLI, financiado por el Consejo Europeo de Investigación, desarrollará una nueva comprensión, basada en la evidencia empírica, de la dignidad humana en situaciones en las que las personas se ven privadas de su libertad, como en prisiones, hospitales psiquiátricos y residencias de ancianos en tres países europeos. Combinará el análisis jurídico con la sociología, la filosofía, los estudios de salud y la investigación cualitativa y cuantitativa. El objetivo del proyecto es mejorar la interpretación jurídica de la dignidad humana en situaciones de privación de libertad, fundamentándola en pruebas empíricas derivadas de experiencias vividas.

Objetivo

Dignity is a fundamental European value. A concept with a long history of debate in philosophy, theology, law, and human rights, the precise contours of what it requires remain contested. Dignity is an animating value of the European Convention on Human Rights, but has a particular connection to Article 3 and its prohibition on torture and inhuman and degrading treatment. The deprivation of liberty is recognised as a setting where dignity – however defined – is under significant threat. DOLI will provide a novel analysis of what dignity is by engaging in the first empirical assessment of what people deprived of their liberty consider it to mean, what matters most in terms of its protection, and the experience of its violation. DOLI will transform the scholarship on dignity by providing a new empirical assessment of what it means, when it is promoted, and when it is violated. Responding to the increasing awareness in international human rights instruments and scholarship that liberty can be deprived in non-traditional settings such as care homes, DOLI will be the first examination of the experience of and threats to dignity across three forms of detention: prisons; psychiatric hospitals; and care homes for older people in three European countries. While Article 3 is often used in cases relating to imprisonment, it has had much less application in non-prison environments. DOLI will provide a step change in our understanding of the lived experience of dignity in the deprivation of liberty. Drawing on law and human rights, sociology, philosophy and health studies, DOLI will deploy a novel blend of legal analysis, qualitative and quantitative approaches, grounded in human-rights based methods, to create new frameworks for understanding dignity and Article 3 in the deprivation of liberty, new measures to assess it protection, and a new empirical basis for legal norms and judicial decision-making on this vital concept in the protection of human rights in Europe.