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What is it in virtue of which we can say that each person has an intrinsic human dignity? Where does this transcendent value come from? For the Christian, and for many of other religions too, this transcendent value is from God. But one does not need to be a religious believer to affirm, from reflection on experience, that other people matter and make a claim upon us, and that ‘human dignity’ is the idea which best encapsulates the universal truth of that claim, with the moral force that it carries.
We can see this if we reflect on the extraordinary scenes played out in 2011 in the countries of the Middle East. In Tunisia the slogan was ‘Dignity, Bread and Freedom’. And I was struck by this account from an Egyptian journalist, Nawara Najem, of how the crowds suddenly decided to risk being shot and refuse to be intimidated. She said: ‘Why did the people not fear death? No one knows. It was not only religion. It was not only poverty. It was not only despair. Perhaps the answer is human dignity. No force, however tyrannical, is able to deprive human beings of this.’3
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