Svijest o ljudskim pravima
Human Rights Awareness

Summary/Abstract: The development of awareness of human rights is an important part of the process of the democratization of democracy: the development of citizens’ participation, civil society, people’s self-protection, self-development and self-fulfilment. The awareness of rights should be understood as an awareness of “the right to the possibility” of personal action, and not only as the right to “unbounded” activity. Human rights should be understood as being empowered to realize the freedom for something and not only the freedom from something. That is why the awareness of human rights is increasingly becoming part of people’s civic and democratic political culture. The research has shown how the human rights awareness increases the democratization potential of any country and that the development of this awareness does not depend so much on social demography (class, gender, education, age) – though there are some inter-ethnic differences – as on the leftist political inclinations. This has been corroborated by our survey of Croatian university students. The research has also shown that the average number of respected rights is relatively high in many countries, but that there are significant differences regarding certain rights.

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