The Right to Dignity

The Right to Dignity, as reflected in the Charter of Palermo (2015), affirms that every person must be recognized and treated as a human being first, regardless of nationality, legal status, or circumstance. The Charter consistently centers this principle—“I am human”—as the foundation upon which all other rights are built, and rejects frameworks that reduce individuals to administrative categories or instruments of policy.

Within this approach, upholding human dignity requires that laws, procedures, and institutions avoid producing conditions of humiliation, marginalization, or exclusion. Practices that subject individuals to prolonged uncertainty, precarious legal standing, or unequal treatment are understood to undermine dignity, even when formally justified within existing systems.

The Charter also links dignity to the capacity to participate fully in social and civic life. Access to work, housing, health care, and public services are conditions that enable individuals to live with autonomy and self-respect. Ensuring dignity therefore depends on removing barriers that prevent people from exercising these rights in practice.

Accordingly, the Charter calls on public institutions to adopt policies and administrative practices that place the person at the center.