Weekly Human Rights News: 13/09/2024

After a summer break, this week we are back delivering online and face-to-face workshops, specifically with various groups of staff from Tees, Esk and Wear Valley NHS Foundation Trust. This included re-starting our two-part introductory workshops for a wide range of staff which provide an overview of the Human Rights Act and how it works in health settings.  

 We also met back up with a group we are getting to know well for the fifth of our nine-part online human rights practice leads series which is running until January 2025. This workshop was co-designed and co-delivered with one of BIHR’s Lived Experience Experts, Charli Clement, and we focused on how mental capacity and human rights relate to each other, and how different rights can be balanced using the legal framework of the Human Rights Act.  

 And if that wasn’t enough, we also ran a face-to-face workshop this week with peer workers at TEWV who have lived experience of mental health and autism. This workshop focused on the right to private and family life (Article 8), the right to be safe from serious harm (Article 3), and the right to non-discrimination (Article 14), as well as sharing some advocacy skills for speaking up to ensure public bodies’ decisions respect human rights.  

Over the summer, BIHR responded to a recent Department of Health and Social Care Consultation on whether they should change regulations to require staff in mental health units in England to notify the Care Quality Commission of the use of restraint within 72 hours.  

Our consultation response was co-written with Lived Experience Experts (LEEs) who contributed their direct experiences of either working in mental health trusts or as inpatients or family members of those accessing mental health services. BIHR also drew on our experience of running human rights programmes with mental health trusts from across the UK and of working with individuals and community groups to support them to understand their rights. 

We said that while we agree with the principle of introducing a measure to report all forms of restraint within 72 hours and the aim of increasing accountability, a reporting duty alone is not enough to effectively decrease the use of restraint.  We believe the proposals must sit alongside a mandatory requirement for staff to be trained in human rights and supported to use a framework to make individualised and proportionate decisions.  

The Department of Health and Social Care are now running an Easy Read version of this consultation which closes on 27th September.  

BIHR would like to give a warm welcome to our new Delivery Team Senior Manager Emily Malcolm who is joining us whilst our Head of Policy and Programmes Carlyn is on maternity leave. Emily has 12+ years management experience in programmes with charities and the UN, working in the UK, Africa, Asia and Latin America and we are so pleased to have her as part of our team.  

Catriona Moore, Policy Manager for IPSEA (Independent Provider of Special Education Advice) and BIHR RITES Committee Expert spoke on Women’s Hour on Tuesday 10th September as part of a discussion about how children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities are supported in the UK and whether this system is working.  

The Swiss Government said it thinks it is already meeting its human rights obligations in relation to climate change targets 

In April 2024, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) found that Switzerland had breached the Article 6 right to a fair trial and the Article 8 right to private life by failing to take action on climate change and by not properly considering an organisation’s legal case about the issue. The ECtHR said that because of the complexity of the issues involved, it could not say specifically what steps Switzerland should take but that the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers would work with the Swiss Government to ensure it adopted measures to protect human rights. In June 2024, Swiss Parliament said that it did not think the country needed to make any changes as a result of the ruling because it “already had an effective climate change strategy”. On 28th August 2024, the Swiss Government (known as the Swiss Federal Council) said that, while it is “committed to Switzerland's membership of the Council of Europe and to the system of the European Convention on Human Rights”, it also believes that Switzerland “meets the climate policy requirements of the ruling”. It said that its CO2 Act, which was passed in March 2024, sets defined measures to achieve climate targets by 2030. The Council also said it did not believe that organisations should be able to bring cases about climate change but that it has asked a government department to look into how the ECtHR’s ruling on this would impact the law in Switzerland and to report back to the Council by the end of 2025. Switzerland confirmed it will report to the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers explaining its positions.