Bill of Rights: People’s lives are ruled and regulated...

Our portal “American Clubs – Ukraine” continues publishing the essays, submitted to the Second Annual Student Essay Competition in support of Democracy in Ukraine, on the topic “Bill of Rights in the US: Democracy Lessons for Ukraine”.

People’s lives are ruled and regulated by different rules of etiquette, behavior, traffic regulations, family relationship and soon. The most important relations in the life of a person are regulated by different rules written by laws. The laws are established and ensured by the state bodies. They are created to reflect the thoughts of the majority on how to act in various situations: what to do and what is not to be done.

In 1791 there were added 10 amendments to the constitutions which are more known as The Bill of Rights. These amendments guaranteed the US citizens the freedom of press, conscience and meetings. The law defended the person and their property, and gave the right to ownership of weapons. After these amendments were voted for, the US government had to keep to these rules and defend the rights of the citizens. But not all the citizens of the USA could use these guaranteed rights. There were many who represented and rural poor people and women devoid of their rights. Indians and slaves did not have their human rights. A very nasty phenomenon – slavery was banned in the north but flourished in the south. The effort to abolish slavery in the country met severe resistance of plantators and ended in failure.

At the and of the XVIIIth century there the idea of division into legislative and executive powers was implemented adding general elections for men with the idea of rotation of the post and the spreading of the liberal – democratic way of political interaction, elections as one of the central issues. However, it was only in the XXth century that the general and equal electoral rights had come into essence. Elections have become the most wide-spread way of gaining the power, one of the features of the just society.

In the 20th our state has on the road of democracy stepped. Regarding our country we must say that the changes have been drastic. It was recently that we had lived in a totalitarian society, based on the violence and totalitarian control. The main thing was to be obedient and unpretentiousness. To criticize the authorities – it was unheard of. The issue of the people’s rights, nothing to speak of the children’s rights, was not understood by and was thought of as being absolutely unreal. But, luckily, things change. We used to think about our planet as being platter flat and those who thought otherwise was considered insane and lost their lives. The society had several centuries to re-think and came to the conclusion and changed its mind. The same concerns the human rights issue – we need the strength of enthusiasts in order the society to understand and implement the human rights for the benefit of people. That’s why in 1996 the Constitution of Ukraine became its fundamental law guaranteeing the most important rights for the Ukrainian citizens.

Being a Ukrainian citizen we should follow all the regulations and rights. To be a real citizen, to share the ideas and co-work with different people we should keep in mind that we should live and work in the interests of every and all, we should know the laws and be able to use them.

Human rights are the basic standards, people cannot live without them. Human rights are the basement of liberty, justice and peace. To respect them is to develop a person and society as a whole.

Author: Andriy Myronov, Zhitomyr Military Institute

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Competition is held by the Center for Political Studies (Donetsk, Ukraine), jointly with the portal “American Clubs – Ukraine”, and the Kyiv Alumni Resource Center (ARC). General partner of the competition: American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii (Honolulu, USA). Partners of the competition: Institute of Professional Lobbying and Advocacy (IPLA) and Donetsk Regional Association of International Researchers (DAIR). More detailed information about the competition is available here.