Human rights protect our lives and our bodies from harm, allowing us to live as free persons, and to carry out different activities – to express ourselves, to learn new information, to meet with friends and like-minded people and so on.

To provide real and practical human rights, states have undertaken to explain and protect them by adopting the necessary laws.

In Estonia, human rights in their most basic form have been explained in the Estonian Constitution. But there are also other laws, which further explain what each right means, as well as what is allowed and what is prohibited.

example The Estonian Constitution says that everyone is equal before the law and nobody shall be discriminated against. But the Gender Equality Act, Equal Treatment Act and other laws clarify how this right works in specific areas such as employment, education, healthcare and access to goods and services.

Assess your knowledge

If you wish to use the Guide for learning purposes, the Guide offers you a possibility to assess your knowledge in human rights before or after studying, by completing tests about different themes included in the Guide.

Human Rights Guide

A European platform for human rights education