Venezuelan adults’ views on the indivisibility of human rights: a preliminary study

ABSTRACT

The present study examined the extent to which people living in Venezuela consider that human rights are indivisible rights. Eighty unpaid participants living in Caracas, Barquisimeto, and Maracaibo were presented with 36 cards showing a story of a few lines, which described the socio-political situation in a fictitious state, and a response scale. Each story had four critical items of information (a) the degree in which the State offers social protection to the citizens ( not at all, intermediate or complete), (b) the level of respect for Civil liberties in the country (no respect, intermediate, full respect), (c) the level of Equality between citizens (inequality of rights vs. equality of right), and (d) the level of Respect for the private life of the citizens (no respect for private life vs. full respect for private life). The question was "To what extend do you consider that the human rights are respected in this country"? The participants considered that (a) enjoying one basic right (e.g., enjoying freedom of speech) was better than enjoying no right at all, and that enjoying two basic rights was better than enjoying just one, and so on, (b) enjoying any right at an intermediate level was not very different than not enjoying this right, although it was better than not enjoying this right at all, and (c) only the complete enjoyment of all basic rights (Right to Privacy, Civil Liberties, Equality, and Social Protection) can be considered as full enjoyment of human rights. In addition, it was found that the impact of the social protection factor was considerably weaker than the impact of the other factors, which can be explained by the economic level of development of the Venezuelan society (AU)

RESUMEN

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