We start (in this chapter) with the post-Second World War international instruments that laid the foundations for the culture of human rights that was to develop throughout the second the second half of the twentieth century. Here, intrinsic human dignity is a seminal idea that acts as the background justification for the recognition of human right and as the source of the fundamental freedoms to which all humans (qua human) are entitled. In this context, human dignity as empowerment (specifically, the empowerment that comes with the right to respect for one’s dignity as a human, and the right to the conditions in which human dignity can flourish) is the ruling conception.