Authors: Dominika Lorek, Olga Sitarz

Keywords: children’s rights, the right to life, human rights, Polish penal law

Abstract:

The right to life is a fundamental and primeval right. It is a point of departure for enjoying all the fundamental rights and freedoms a human being is entitled to by his/her birth. In the wide range of values protected by law it constitutes a ‘condition’ to get access to all the other ones protected by European and International Human Rights Law. Thus, it might seem that the protection and guarantee of this right should not raise any doubts. Indeed, most of the European countries provide general constitutional guarantees of the right to life and through penal regulations the level of protection is strengthened by regulating different crimes against life (homicide, infanticide etc). The question we are tackling in this paper is if, within the frame of Polish law and regulation, the right to life is defended in full scope or rather in separate articles of criminal law, or other regulations belonging to different branches of law, or, figuratively speaking, “switch off” the aforementioned defence.

Prof. univ. dr.
Doina BALAHUR