Our Vision, Mision & Strategy
Our Strategy
At BIHR, our focus is on ensuring the UK’s human rights law delivers everyday justice.
We connect people's everyday experiences to the law, create opportunities to use rights in practice, challenge barriers to everyday justice, positively change decisions and systems, and champion universal human rights.
Whether we're building community power, enabling public services to fulfil their legal duties, or influencing policy and legal reform, the common thread is the implementation of the Human Rights Act as a practical tool for change, helping secure everyday justice in people's daily lives.
Our 2026-2031 Strategy focuses on securing everyday justice through the practical use of the Human Rights Act (HRA). Through five connected ways of working, Connect, Create, Challenge, Change, Champion, we help people use the HRA in practice, improve decision-making and public services, and drive wider systems change across five key areas that affect everyday life:
Our Vision
Our vision is of a society where human rights are embedded across everyday systems in national and local law, policy, and public services, enabling everyday justice for all.
Our Mission
Our mission is to champion the Human Rights Act as a practical tool for everyday justice, helping civil society, communities, public bodies, and policymakers embed rights in law, policy, and services. Through expertise, evidence, and experience, we drive change for everyday justice.
This means people, communities, and public bodies are empowered, connected, and resilient, using the Human Rights Act to drive systemic change and uphold universal protections. Within this, BIHR is the trusted authority championing the practical realisation of human rights in daily life and policy.
Why this Matters, Now
We know from our direct, on the ground work, that the Human Rights Act has transformed countless lives over the past 25 years. But we are living through increasingly uncertain and divided times. Many people feel disconnected from the decisions that affect them, trust in institutions is under strain, and public debate can too often focus on what separates us rather than what we share.
The challenges people face in their everyday lives are deeply interconnected. Housing, health, social care, welfare, and education shape all our lives, and when these systems are under pressure, the impacts are felt most acutely by those facing disadvantage and exclusion.
We believe human rights offer a way forward. The Human Rights Act provides a shared framework of dignity, fairness, accountability, and respect that belongs to all of us. It helps people challenge poor decisions, supports public bodies to make better ones, and creates common ground across communities, sectors, and institutions.
Our 2026-2031 Strategy is built on firm belief – backed by over 2 decades of experience - that the future of human rights depends not only on protecting them, but on putting them into practice. By connecting people's everyday experiences with public services, policymakers, and the law, we help ensure human rights are understood, used, and embedded in the decisions and systems that shape daily life.
By 2031, we want to see
stronger communities and civil society organisations confidently using the Human Rights Act to secure change;
public bodies routinely embedding human rights in decision-making and service delivery; and
law and policy increasingly informed by evidence of rights in reality.
We want a Human Rights Act that is better understood, better implemented, and more deeply embedded across the systems that affect daily life, helping ensure dignity, fairness, accountability, and solidarity are experienced in practice, not just protected in principle. We want to see everyday justice.