Weekly Human Rights News: 25/10/24

This week our CEO travelled to Gloucestershire to work with one of our 2024 Community Programme partners the Parent and Carer Alliance, to review and test our new co-produced guide supporting parents and carers to use the Human Rights Act in advocating for support for their disabled children. This is a detailed guide, focused on how understanding the legal duties and human rights in the HRA can be harnessed to address the support needs of disabled children and young people and their families. We tested our 3-part structure of Duties, Rights, Actions all of which draw on real examples from the families PCA supports, and worked through new tools, including a detailed Human Rights Act Advocacy Flowchart, a template letter, and an escalation letter. As one of the parent advocates shared: "Thank you so much, really was so informative and will be a valuable resource to our work!". We're looking forward to the final touches on this Guide, and the different human rights support solutions being developed with our 3 other community partners, ready for launching this Human Rights Day, 10 December. 

This week we continued our nine-part capacity-building series with Tees, Esk and Wear Valley NHS Foundation Trust, supporting human rights-based practice leadership across the organisation with staff in a range of roles and teams. This was the seventh workshop which was tailored to address key areas of interest for the group of practitioners, and was co-designed and co-delivered with Charli Clement, one of BIHR's Lived Experience Experts. We focused on the right to non-discrimination (Article 14, HRA) and how it functions as a "piggyback right", as well as the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion (Article 9,HRA) and the right to freedom of expression (Article 10, HRA). One of the stories we explored using the practical framework of the Human Rights Act was of a young person who was being prevented from praying in accordance with her faith whilst admitted to a mental health hospital. The aim of this programme is to enable staff to feel knowledgeable and confident to make and advocate for rights-respecting decision-making in their practice.

The Attorney General talked about the importance of human rights law

The Bingham Lecture is an annual event hosted by the Bingham Centre for Rule of Law, an organisation focused on advancing the rule of law worldwide. On 14th October, the UK’s Attorney General, Lord Hermer KC, delivered the lecture for 2024, titled “The Rule of Law in the Age of Populism”.

In his speech, the Attorney General discussed human rights as “an essential element of the rule of law and a stable democratic culture. As well as recognising and protecting the dignity of all, they guarantee the essential rights and freedoms which underpin our system.”

He went on to look at how the UK’s Human Rights Act both provides protections for individual rights and fundamental freedoms while preserving the principle of parliamentary sovereignty. He also emphasised that the UK Government will “continue to abide by and unequivocally support the European Convention on Human Rights, including by complying with requests from the Court for interim measures.”

IMPACT and Bild launched a new video called 'Homes not Hospitals'

On 14th October, IMPACT held a webinar to launch a new short film called 'Homes not Hospitals', facilitated in partnership with Bild and IMPACT network organisations. The important film highlights the experiences of people with a learning disability and autistic people, and their families and loved ones, sharing the impact of missed opportunities to avoid lengthy hospital admissions and enable people to live well in the community. The video contains distressing content. 

BIHR's Senior Human Rights Officer spoke at the webinar about how the Human Rights Act provides universal legal protections for everyone in the UK and acts as a rulebook for how the state treats people, underpinned by core values of respect, dignity, and fairness. The video was directed by Alexis Quinn, manager of the Restraint Reduction Network and a person with lived experience.