Human rights in Finland are protected by the constitution and extensive domestic safeguards, in addition to the country's active membership in most international human rights treaties.
Areas of continuing interest to international agencies that monitor human rights include:
- Conscientious objectors to both military and civilian service are jailed for six months. There are about 10–20 conscientious objectors every year. Most are in minimum security, open facilities, and objecting is not entered on criminal records.
- Charges of racist/xenophobic treatment of ethnic minorities by officials, and that refugees are hand-picked by the Ministry of the Interior on basis of country of origin citing "security reasons".
- A case in which agitated asylum seekers were drugged for deportation.
- Unfair court action in the light of unacceptably delayed verdicts, in breach with the European Convention on Human Rights article 6§1. Handling time have been unacceptably long particularly in civil cases or criminal court cases relating to bankruptcy, e.g. eight years in the district court and 12 years in total.
Read more about Human Rights In Finland: Independence, Military Service and Civilian Service, Migrant Workers in Finland
Famous quotes containing the words human and/or rights:
“We have almost succeeded in leveling all human activities to the common denominator of securing the necessities of life and providing for their abundance.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“If the veil were withdrawn from the sanctuary of domestic life, and man could look upon the fear, the loathing, the detestations which his tyranny and reckless gratification of self has caused to take the place of confiding love, which placed a woman in his power, he would shudder at the hideous wrong of the present regulations of the domestic abode.”
—Lydia Jane Pierson, U.S. women’s rights activist and corresponding editor of The Woman’s Advocate. The Woman’s Advocate, represented in The Lily, pp. 117-8 (1855-1858 or 1860)