Weekly Human Rights News: 28/06/2024

This week we shared a new guest blog on the importance of the right to free elections, written by our Lived Experience Expert Charli. As an autistic and neuro-divergent person, Charli’s unique perspective to elections comes from her experiences having lived as an in-patient in a children’s mental health service.

Charli shares her insights to the way the right works in practice and the key information that individuals and practitioners need to know, such as the fact that lack of mental capacity for some decisions under the Mental Capacity Act and similar legislation do not apply to capacity and right to vote.

Our CEO Sanchita recently joined NDTi’s team away day to discuss what being bold and brave looks like in practice. NDTi is an independent, not-for-profit organisation working alongside people, communities, policy makers, support organisations and services to support children and young people at risk of exclusion, people who have a learning disability, autistic people, older people and everyone’s mental health and wellbeing. Sanchita discussed her personal and professional journey with human rights and how we can harness the power of the Human Rights Act to support positive, practical change with people in their lives and interactions with power. She set the challenge of not only moving on to new asks, but of recognising the value of doing the work of implementation, which is sometimes the radical thing to do, especially when there is such a gulf between policy intent and practice. Thought provoking discussions looked at what opportunities there are for organisations across the sector to explicitly integrate human rights into the practice, challenge and change with public bodies, and how we can each be part of making universal human rights have meaning in the small places close to home. 

The Human Rights Measuring Initiative (HRMI) is a collaboration between human rights practitioners, researchers, academics and human rights supporters that gathers data on the human rights performance of different countries. On Wednesday 26th June, HRMI shared new data on the UK, looking at both economic and social rights (such as the right to food, housing and health) and civil and political rights (such as freedom from torture and ill-treatment). The data also highlights groups that are at particular risk of human rights violations, including refugees and people seeking asylum; people who are homeless; and people with disabilities.