Weekly Human Rights News: 11/10/24

This week, BIHR and Just Fair met with the London Community Partners for the first time in-person. This was a great opportunity to spend the afternoon learning more about each other and our work, and to look at the road ahead for the five-year programme.

The day involved learning more from the four community partners about how they would like to use a human rights approach in their strategies, how they would like to evolve and be supported in the programme over the next four years, and how we can utilise our networks and maximise our reach. We are already thinking ahead to our next quarterly meet which will take place in January 2025. 

BIHR has been working alongside four community groups across the UK to co-design a bespoke human rights solution to support their work advocating for human rights in their work. Part of this year’s process will see BIHR staff visiting the four organisations in person to work directly with their staff, volunteers and members.

This week, our Senior Human Rights Officer Annie visited the offices of Bomoko NI (or Northern Ireland Refugees and Asylum Seekers Women Association) in Belfast to test the first draft of their resource. Together with BIHR we are creating a small folded leaflet focusing on human rights in relation to temporary accommodation, containing real stories from refugee and asylum seeker women. The group learned more about the Human Rights Act before sharing lots of helpful comments to improve the leaflet. We are now working on the final draft which will be shared publicly later on this year. 

For recovery month in September, BIHR co-published a joint guide with the Scottish Recovery Consortium (SRC) called ‘Using Human Rights in Recovery’. This guide follows on from the Rights in Recovery Leadership Programme delivered in 2022 and 2024, where BIHR and SRC co-designed and co-delivered a training programme for recovery advocates supporting people whose lives have been affected by substance use.

This week, SRC held a face-to-face event at their offices in Glasgow to launch the joint guide. At the event, people from the recovery sector together to discuss the importance of human rights and the impact they can have in recovery contexts. This will be followed by a virtual launch next week which BIHR will be attending. 

European Court of Human Rights: Cyprus breached the human rights of people seeking asylum by not assessing their claims

In 2016, cousins M.A. and Z.R. were forced to flee Syria after their homes were destroyed in the war. They went to a refugee camp in Lebanon but said there was no healthcare there and they could not access basic rights. They were also afraid of being sent back to Syria as Lebanese authorities had started to do to others. They decided to take a small boat to Cyprus to seek asylum there. However, when their boat reached Cypriot waters, they were stopped by the coastguard. They explained they wanted to seek asylum but were told they were not allowed to enter Cyprus. After being stranded at sea for two days, M.A. and Z.R. were forcibly returned to Lebanon, where they were arrested and questioned by Lebanese police before being released. The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) said that by returning M.A. and Z.R. to Lebanon without assessing their asylum claim or whether they were putting their human rights at risk by sending them back, Cyprus had breached their right to be free from inhuman and degrading treatment (Article 3, HRA). It also said Cyprus had breached their right to an effective remedy under Article 13 of the European Convention on Human Rights. While Cyprus argued that they have an agreement with Lebanon and consider it a safe third country, the ECtHR said that “States could not evade their own responsibility by relying on obligations arising out of bilateral agreements with other countries.” 

Read the press release.