The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) visited Clingendael for a workshop with junior diplomats from the Balkans and Turkey on the 1st of November.

The intergovernmental organisation IDEA mainly focuses on electoral processes. Its department in The Hague works mainly on constitution building.

Essential human rights

The workshop kicked off with an overview of some basic concepts like ‘human rights culture’. This defines how much a society values human rights and tries to maximize these rights.

Soon the participants were engaged in interactive exercises. Their first exercise was to name five rights that should be in every constitution. Most of the diplomats defined the following human rights as most essential:

• The right to life 
• The right to a dignified life
• The right to property,
• Freedom of expression
• Freedom of religion 
• Freedom of speech

After identifying these rights, the discussion soon moved to the question wether these rights were present in the participants´ home countries´ constitutions. The answer was a definite 'yes'. 

Discussing human rights in practice

However, the problem seemed to be that the law was there, but that the constitution was sometimes not respected as it should be. This led to further discussion on wether or not human rights could be subject to limitations in certain cases.

The participants were in strong agreement that human rights violations would not be permissable under any circumstance. The workshop ended with a number of conclusions to be drawn from that morning´s discussions.

IDEA succeeded in leaving the participants with many new insights in to matters regarding human rights and the consitution.