Weekly Human Rights News: 26/07/2024

This week’s human rights news includes BIHR travelling to community events in London and Birmingham, an online workshop with public officials who support people with a learning disability and autistic people, and a commitment from the Prime Minister that the UK will not withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights under this Government.

On Wednesday morning, our Programmes and Policy Lead Katrin delivered an online workshop with staff who support people with a learning disability and autistic people living in the community, arranged by Partners in Care and Health.

The workshop was attended by 18 people in a range of roles across England, including commissioners for NHS trust and local authorities, social workers, nurses, and clinical psychologists. Together, the group explored UK human rights law and what it means for public officials practicing in health and care contexts, using real-life stories to discuss applying human rights in practice. We focussed on two key rights for people with a learning disability and autistic people: the right to private and family life, home and correspondence (Article 8 of the Human Rights Act) and the right to be free from inhuman and degrading treatment (Article 3 of the Human Rights Act).

On Wednesday, four of the BIHR team made their way to Birmingham to meet up with the successful community groups we are currently partnering with on our UK-wide Community Programme (pictured). Our four partner organisations travelled in from Nottingham, Gloucestershire, Mid Glamorgan, and Belfast to connect in person with BIHR and get to know each other better, and to begin sharing ideas for co-creating a human rights support solution that will support each of their unique missions using human rights.

We talked about the power of community groups to bring about positive change using human rights, and started to plan together what kind of solution would be most useful for their work, thinking about who it will be for, what it will help them to do, and how the solution will practically be used.

On Wednesday evening, our Senior Human Rights Officer Charlotte joined one of our London Communities partners, Southall Community Alliance, at their Annual General Meeting (AGM). Charlotte met with Trustees, businesses, voluntary groups, and local residents in Southall who are all campaigning to address the cultural and social needs of the area through human rights.

At the meeting, guest speaker Bassam Mahfouz (Member of the London Assembly) spoke to the community about the upcoming plans for infrastructure and support to Southall, including commitments to social housing, education and strengthening community outreach across the borough. Yvonne Johnson, Mayor of Ealing was also in attendance.

The Prime Minister said the UK will not leave the European Convention on Human Rights under this government

The UK’s recently elected Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, spoke in Parliament this week about the current Government’s commitment to remaining in the European Convention on Human Rights. He said:

"Let me be clear: there is no need to withdraw from the European convention on human rights. That is not consistent with the values of that blood bond, so we will not withdraw—not now, not ever.”

The European Convention on Human Rights, or ECHR, is the international treaty which sets out a list of fundamental human rights for all people in Member State countries, including the UK, and creates the European Court of Human Rights for people to seek justice if their rights are risked. The 16 rights in our Human Rights Act come directly from the Articles in the ECHR.

BIHR has lots of information about the ECHR on our website, including plain language and Easy Read explainers, real life legal cases, facts and statistics, and more.