Chapter 5 – Making justice work

Introduction

The picture shows a boy and a girl on a see-saw. The fulcrum supporting the see-saw is not in the middle, providing the girl with a longer lever and the boy with a shorter one. So the girl is dominating the game and she seems to be enjoying it. The boy, with an unhappy look on his face, is trying hard to get down, but his efforts are in vain. Such situations often lead to quarrel and conflict. The fulcrum in the middle carries the symbol of a paragraph referring to the law.

The picture may be read in different ways and it leads to interesting questions. The boy’s and the girl’s opportunities in this situation are unequal, which addresses the issue of gender equality. Surprisingly, it is the girl who has “the long end” of the stick. Perhaps the girl is cheating, which means she has broken the law, or she is enjoying an advantage granted by the law to overcompensate discrimination against women and girls in the past. So is this a fair game? Is equality always fair? Whose human rights are protected by the law? Are anybody’s human rights being violated – and by whom?

The paragraph symbol opens up a further perspective. Who has made the rules of this game? The official symbol of the law refers to the State and the rule of law. The state may consist of institutions sharing power and controlling each other in a system of checks and balances – parliament, government and law courts. It may be run by a benevolent or despotic autocrat. Laws are crucial, as they transform human rights into civil rights for the citizens of a nation state. Laws therefore protect human rights if they are violated. As the picture shows, however, human rights may be violated by fellow citizens or even by an unfair law itself.

Alternatively, the law must strike a balance between the rights of the individual citizens and define the limits of an individual’s human rights to protect the rights of others.

The exercises in this chapter address these issues of fairness and justice. The students will realise that justice is crucial for peace and security in society.