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 rights, human and/or rights:
“Human life consists in mutual service. No grief, pain, misfortune, or “broken heart,” is excuse for cutting off one’s life while any power of service remains. But when all usefulness is over, when one is assured of an unavoidable and imminent death, it is the simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one.”
—Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935)
“I have everything in the world that is necessary to happiness, good faith, good friends and all the work I can possibly do. I think God’s greatest blessing to the human race was when He sent man forth into the world to earn his bread by the sweat of his face. I believe in toil, in the dignity of labor, but I also believe in adequate compensation for that toil.”
—Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919)
“To exercise power costs effort and demands courage. That is why so many fail to assert rights to which they are perfectly entitled—because a right is a kind of power but they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise it. The virtues which cloak these faults are called patience and forbearance.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)