Introduction
Life is not only synonymous with human existence; it is the “foundation of man as an individual and as a member of society” (Tomuschat et al. 2010, p. 3). Hence, the right to life is not just any one of the fundamental rights but occupies a special position in the value hierarchy, being the most important protected value because life is “the precondition for the exercise of any other right” (Petersen 2012, para. 1). The right to life has thus been defined as the “inalienable attribute of human beings” (Schabas 2015, p. 119), the “supreme right,” and “one of the rights which constitute the irreducible core of human rights” (Schabas 2015, p. 117), and the “fulcrum of all other rights” (African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (2015), General Comment No. 3, p. 7).
Despite being recognized in religious teachings, it is only during the time of the Enlightenment that the right to life found recognition as a legal principle. It can be found in national constitutions as...
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Roberti di Sarsina, J. (2019). Right to Life. In: Romaniuk, S., Thapa, M., Marton, P. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Global Security Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74336-3_357-1
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