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Why do we live so bad? It
is a question that many people ask themselves. Why? In Japan, Germany,
France people live much better. We frequently explain it with political
and economic reasons. I will risk and offer another reason. The foundation
for good live of Japanese and Germans is their respect to the rights.
And this respect influences the level of social, cultural and economic
wellbeing of their societies.
In this case the right should be explained in a wide context - it is the
existing legislation, realization and protection of rights, adherence
to the rights of your neighbor, and application of the right as the criterion
to measure "right, not right".
In Japan and France the majority adheres to the rights and respects them.
What we can see in our country is the flourishing nihilism. "Legal
nihilism - is the attitude of society or a person to the right, which
is expressed in denial of its social meaning" (Jurisprudence, Kopeychykov
V.V./Yurinkom Inter, 2001).
When you give a bribe to solve a problem, or ask the "authorities"
to help you get your loan, violation of rules when you live in the dormitory,
tolerant not-doing-anything when you are being insulted - these are only
some forms of social nihilism.
When you act in such a way, people do not use legal mechanisms to solve
the problem. They think of alternative ways - illegal - ways to solve
the conflict situation. An old woman who gives a judge second-hand shoes,
a person who uses his work status for his own needs, a policeman who makes
someone pay a fine - all of them forget about their human dignity, norms
of moral, morality. They do not even suspect that they are committing
a crime or a misdemeanor, they are used to live this way and to act this
way.
The country where the social nihilism is prospering is full of such opinions:
all courts are bribed, it is useless to come to the police for help, deputies
and the Government are guilty for everything, because they make useless
laws, they all cover one another… And given all this, people are not interested
in laws, mechanisms to protect their rights, they are not even interested
in their own rights and freedoms written down in the Constitution.
The monitoring that the KRCHF conducted on adherence to human rights at
schools of the Kherson city (surveys were conducted at 10-11 grades),
showed: the majority of school students (77%) know or have hear about
human rights, but only 32% were able to name some rights, and 23% have
no idea about the human rights. After school young people go to the Universities
and Institutes where they have a short course on Constitutional Law of
Ukraine, in some institutions they can learn basics of labor and commercial
law. Many students remember these courses as a toothache and do not understand
the reason to have these courses. No one in their environment - neither
parents, not faculty - uses legal knowledge in practice. Neither schools,
nor Universities have a separate course on human rights. How can a young
person know about human dignity, his rights and freedoms?
Literally everyone uses our illiteracy in this question - beginning with
swindlers and finishing with representatives of law-enforcement bodies.
I will risk to state that there is a huge fault of citizens themselves
in this entire problem, because they stubbornly refuse to learn at least
the Constitution and they find explanation to their inertness in a famous
saying: you can not find the truth in our country. But if you do not try
to find it, then why do you ask: why do we live so bad? It was said long
time ago: nothing ventures, nothing gained.
Oleksandr Burmagin
Lawyer at the public legal aid center at the Charity and health Foundation.
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