Tag: Human rights

Human rights: progress report


Report on the current situation with human rights legislation in the UK

October 2023

It has been distressing to see the steady erosion of rights in the UK with limits on protests, campaigning and access to judicial review all incorporated in legislation. Police powers have also been increased. The war in the Middle East has seen the Home Secretary urge the police to take action against supporters of the Palestinian position.

A disappointing lack of resistance has been seen with the introduction of these new laws and other bills in parliament. There has been opposition in the House of Lords but this has been bypassed or simply ignored. The main resistance has come from outside organisations such as Each Other and Open Britain. The Labour Party has been disappointingly quiet.

At the recent Labour Party conference in Manchester there was a fringe event Human Rights for a better Britain. An Amnesty member, Elena Auer, attended this event and reported:

“I attended a Labour Party fringe event held jointly by Amnesty and The Labour Campaign for Human Rights. It was an interesting networking event with opening remarks robustly setting out our defense of human rights. The Labour party representative set out their belief that human rights should remain at the heart of Labour’s policy and practice. We were given a copy of Amnesty’s new ‘Human Rights Manifesto which was launched this week (W/c 9th October) [we have been unable to locate this online but an older version can be accessed here]. The good news was there was a ground-breaking speech from Emily Thornberry committing the a future Labour government to review all anti-rights legislation. I am hopeful that both Amnesty and Liberty would hold the Labour party to account on this if they do form the next government”.

Whether the party – should it form a government – will do more than ‘review’ the legislation remains to be seen. Review by itself commits the party to nothing and it will have to find parliamentary time to debate and drive through alternative legislation. In view of other pledges and changes it wants to make (if the conference speeches are to be believed) then this time may be limited. These more restrictive laws are likely to be a feature for some considerable time.

As previously reported, The Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, visited Washington DC recently and gave a speech in which she referred to the Human Rights Act as the Criminal’s Rights Act. Liberty has gained permission from the High Court to take criminal action against the government for introducing new anti-protest legislation which has been democratically rejected by parliament just a few months previously.

They say that the Home Secretary has acted unlawfully by using a statutory instrument to give the police more powers to impose restrictions on protests that cause ‘more than minor’ disruption. Statutory Instruments are a way to bring new laws in without having to create a whole new bill. Liberty argues the Home Secretary was not given the power by parliament to take this action, making her action a serious overreach which inviolate he constitutional principle of the separation of powers because the measures have already been rejected b parliament. By bringing in these new powers, the government has been accused of breaking the law by giving the police ‘almost unlimited’ powers to shut down protests due to the vagueness of the new language.

Status of Acts

Briefly, the current status of acts which negatively impact on human rights are:

Nationality and Borders Act 2022Royal assent: May 2022
Judicial Review and Courts Act 2022Royal Assent May 2022
Police, Crime, Sentencing Courts Act 2022Royal Assent July 2022
Public Order Act 2023Royal Assent May 2023
Anti-Strike (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023Royal Assent July 2023

We are grateful for group member Mike for the work in facilitating this post.

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Wine and rights


The Wine Society (UK) is paying special attention to human rights in its supply chain

September 2023

The Wine Society was formed in 1874 and flourishes today with many thousands of members and an enviable reputation for seeking out and supplying quality wines from around the world. In its latest newsletter to members (Issue 12, Autumn 2023) it has an article Announcing the fair treatment of workers in our supply chain explaining what the Society proposes to do to ensure human rights are observed throughout the supply chain.

Globalisation has produced many advantages for consumers in the West. Products and produce from around the world have arrived on our shores and into our high street stores to enable people to enjoy cheap clothes, out of season produce and a wide range of manufactures which, if made in the UK, would be many times more expensive.

But globalisation has come with some serious disadvantages for those far away who toil in the fields or work in sweatshops for minimal pay.  They have no rights, and suffer many abuses which would be unacceptable in the UK.  For many this is out of sight and some companies like it that way.  Recently, companies – and quite respectable (?) high street names – have shown to be using cotton picked by Uyghur forced labour in China.  We can remember the Rani Plaza collapse in Bangladesh in which several thousand died working in a vast sweatshop producing cheap clothes for several well-known high street UK stores. 

Many firms now pay attention to the issue of how things are produced and the labour abuses happening far away across the world.  However, after every incident which is discovered, we see those same firms express shock at the revelations and claim in written statements (noticeably: few actually appear on screen to face interviews) that they knew nothing and state their company policy which is that they take seriously the issue of human rights. 

The Wine Society is cautious in its approach recognising that policing what growers and vignerons do in far flung parts of the world is not easy. Their requirements include no use of forced labour or children; promoting worker participation; decent standards of accommodation where this is offered; paying a living wage and recognising the rights of local communities to clean air and water. They are about to roll out an independent whistle blowing line across their entire global supply chain. They are also supporting The Sustainable Wine Roundtable a global collaborative platform. The Society’s overall aim is to have the world’s most socially and environmentally sustainable wine supply chain by 2030.

This is a welcome development and a recognition that importers in the UK have a direct responsibility to ensure, as far as they can, that those producing their wares in far away places are treated decently and their human rights observed. It is all too easy to place a contract with a supplier containing well-meaning clauses which in turn sub-contracts to someone else and so on down the chain ultimately to families living in squalor, paid a pittance – if that is they are paid at all – with children working instead of going to school, all with complete deniability.

And the Society supplies very good wine.

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A change in the political climate for human rights


The post war human rights ideology is arguably now over and there is a need for new thinking

July 2023

The post war settlement and the introduction of a ‘rules based order’ for international affairs is arguably now in terminal decline. The creation of the United Nations and the introduction of the Universal Declaration seemed to usher in – many thought – a new way that governments would deal with each other and settle disputes through negotiation. The carnage of the Second World War in which millions of lives were lost was supposed to be a cathartic moment in world history, an event no one wanted to see repeated. Respect for human rights would be a core feature of how people lived around the world.

Recent history casts doubt on this idea and the rise of countries such as China, a post Stalinist Russia and the wealth of Saudi Arabia are beginning to show that the comforting idea of the rules based order is under considerable threat. More and more countries are showing that they can exist quite happily in the world by ignoring nearly all considerations of human rights and a democratic norms. China’s treatment of its Uighur minority has received wide coverage with nearly a million people being subject to so-called ‘re-education’ in an attempt to mould an entire population away from its beliefs and culture. They have almost eliminated any semblance of a free democracy in Hong Kong. Myanmar has brutalised its Rohingya minority forcing huge numbers out of the country. The treatment of Palestinians in Israel and the creation of what is effectively an apartheid state, shows that even a country with a powerful democratic system can behave badly towards those they wish to marginalise. We could quote other examples including Türkiye, Syria, Libya and more recently, Tunisia where in their different ways, human rights and the treatment of its citizens are a long way from the intentions of the Universal Declaration.

Sportswashing

We have discussed sportswashing in several previous posts and in particular, Saudi Arabia with its funding of Newcastle United football club for example, and hosting a Grand Prix, tennis and golf tournaments and other sporting investments. Since early 2021, they have invested at least £4.9bn ($6.3bn) in various sporting events and are currently seeking to purchase the footballer Kylian Mbappé from Paris St Germain for a reported €300m. For them it buys kudos. The sums are so large that a significant number of sports stars are willing to overlook any considerations of human rights and sign up for the various lucrative deals on offer. The extent of their denial of rights can be seen in a report by grant Liberty.

Commercial activity

It would be unfair to heap blame on sports stars alone. After a brief lull following the murder and dismemberment of Adnan Khashoggi, western firms are all too willing to get involved in the many deals and contracts on offer from the kingdom. Even architectural practices are lured to the many contracts of offer as part of the massive half a trillion dollar Neom development being proposed in south west Saudi. We have been happy to supply Saudi with a variety of weapons and personnel to enable it to carry on its war in Yemen creating what, according to the UN, is the worst humanitarian disaster in modern history. In addition to football clubs, the Saudi investment fund is being eagerly welcomed to Teesside.

The significance of the change has not really been taken on board. Saudi’s enormous wealth, China burgeoning power and the increasing post-colonial confidence of countries like South Africa, means there has been a shift away from the ‘Washington consensus’. Human rights have little if any role to play in most of the Gulf states. Opposition is banned, torture is widely practised, human rights activists harassed or arrested and media tightly controlled. A similar story exists in China which operates as a one party state and where human rights norms are largely ignored.

Countries like the UK seem almost to have given up on any pretence that human rights form part of their decision making and in our relations with these countries. In a sense, it is part of our national decline particularly economically. In a word, we can no longer afford to pick and choose. If we want investment in our country, especially in less popular areas (economically speaking) then if a country like Saudi has the money then so be it. If we want sell arms then we must hold our noses and sell to more or less anyone who needs them. Noises are made about export controls and end user certificates, but the pressure is to steer round them not to use them as a force to limit their sale. The recent loss of the court case concerning arms sales to Yemen is a case in point. It is not just the government’s failure to properly consider human rights issues and the terrible effects of bombing in Yemen, but the judges seemed also to push reason to one side in their judgement.

Post war consensus

Post war and in the half century or so which followed, was a period of hope and a belief that human rights could be encouraged around the world. It was not all plain sailing and it took a long time for oppressive states like East Germany to collapse along with other east European states to gain freedom from the Soviet Union. Many countries achieved independence from the colonial powers, France and the UK principally. The UN and its various agencies was able to pursue policies and programmes of benefit to millions of people, tackling polio for example.

In recent times, the leadership of US is coming under strain. Internally, it is struggling with the very concept of democracy. European states are far from united and although there has been some unity in the response to the invasion of Ukraine, they seem far from making the weather as far as human rights and the rule of law are concerned.

What is interesting about sport is the lack of conscience or morality among a significant number of sporting people. If the money is sufficient, they accept the gig, with seemingly no compunction. That women are treated as second class citizens, executions are carried on at an horrific rate, sometimes in public, torture is routine and LGBTQ people are punished or imprisoned, seems not to trouble them. The question is whether this reflects the zeitgeist of the population at large? Are people no longer interested in human rights considerations in our sporting and commercial actions? Have we reached a point in our history where we no longer believe in things which were always said to be a key part of the British character: decency, fair play and respect for the underdog? It would seem so. If the public is more concerned with entertainment and the success or otherwise of their team or sporting hero, who can blame the sportsmen and women taking the millions of riyals on offer?

There does need to be a rethink of our approach to human rights. The belief in largely state led approaches, through treaties, declarations, legal actions and the like, is no longer sustainable especially if the states concerned are more concerned with economic pressures than with the rights of people often far away. The centre of gravity has to a large degree shifted away from the West to countries like China, the Gulf states, Russia and non-aligned countries like Brazil. Some of these countries have a different concept of rights and see Western countries only too willing to turn a blind eye if contracts and sufficient money is on offer. It would seem a little foolish to continue pursuing the post-war ideology in a world which has substantially moved away from those ideas.

Sources include: Amnesty International; New Statesman; Guardian; CAAT, Grant Liberty

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Minutes of November group meeting


We are pleased to attach the minutes of the group’s November meeting with thanks to group member Lesley for the work in compiling them. They contain a lot of interesting material including information about future events, planned or actual, as well as reports on refugees and the death penalty.

Note that the next meeting is December 8th at 2pm. We welcome new members and we hope to see returning ones now that we have shifted to an afternoon slot. We remain concerned about the range of bills and laws the government is planning to pass which will limit our rights to protest and its increasingly authoritarian tone. Refugees remain a live issue receiving much coverage in the media particularly about the boat crossings but who fail to mention the full facts.

November minutes (Word)Download
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FIFA and the World Cup


FIFA writes to all contestants urging them to ‘focus on the football’

November 2022

The decision to hold the World Cup in Qatar was always controversial and as the competition approaches, temperatures have risen concerning the state’s human rights record and treatment of the migrant workers who built the stadiums and facilities, around 6,500 of whom have reportedly died. The FIFA president Gianni Infantino has written to the 32 competing nations asking them to ‘focus on the football’. He suggests further that they need ‘to respect all opinions and beliefs without handing out moral lessons.’ The FIFA General Secretary Fatma Samoura goes further and tells us that the food is great and ‘the tea is beautiful!’ She suggests, absurdly, that Qatar can be used as a ‘role model for other countries in the Gulf’.

The essential dispute is whether sport is a useful pressure point to improve the human rights of the host nations where events take place, or whether sport is simply being used to sanitise the reputations of dire regimes, in other words, sports washing. There is an argument for sporting events going to a country where the combination of visibility, media attention and the need to ‘put on a good face’ can have a positive effect on how individuals are treated. While this may be true in principle, it was hard to find such positive examples on a search through a range of sport-based campaign organisations who promote this idea such as the Centre for Sports and Human Rights. The IOC claimed to insert requirements into their contracts but the extent to which they outlast the actual competition has to be questioned.

Qatar has a range of problems on the human rights front. They include the kafala system which ties workers to their employers. We have mentioned the claim that around 6,500 have died building the facilities. The workers are barred from forming a trade union. FIFA has claimed that reforms have been introduced but there seems little sign of them in practice and enforcement seems minimal. Wage theft is common.

Women are treated poorly. The suffer under the guardianship system which means the permission of a male member of the family is needed to marry, travel or study abroad and divorced women are not permitted to be their children’s guardian.

Same sex relations are banned and are a crime. There is no freedom of expression.

FIFA’s statements seem to be at variance to the idea of sport having some kind of ambassadorial role. If the footballers are being asked not to wear armbands, nor to ‘hand out moral lessons’ as they put it and generally keep a low profile, where then is the pressure on the Qataris going to come from? They were joined by the UK’s foreign secretary James Cleverly MP who was quoted at saying, in connection with LGBT football fans heading for the competition, that they should be ‘respectful of the host nation’. Downing Street distanced themselves from this crass comment.

Another factor is how the competition will be reported. Sports reporting lives largely in a world of its own. The narrative is around how the home country is progressing, who is the favourite to win and facile interviews with the various participants about their performances on the field past and future. Life outside the stadium and hotel rooms are unlikely to get a mention. Will any of the sports reporters visit the squalid accommodation that the men who built the stadiums live in? Will the subservient status of women be mentioned? Since freedom of expression is substantially curtailed, none of this is likely to see the light of day. The reporters might reasonably argue we are here to comment on football not on social or human rights conditions.

There seems no escape from the fact that sport is being used by repressive or abusive regimes to enhance their reputations and the sports people are only too willing to play along. It’s not just football of course: tennis; boxing; golf; motorsport; cycling and athletics have all quite happily taken the money. The notion that sporting events are a force for good and the publicity they generate helps those abused by the regimes is fanciful at best. There seems little evidence of sustained benefit deriving from these major international sporting events. Claims are made but the power of money seems to trump any moral considerations and those with the power to make a difference are only too content to look the other way.

Sources: ITV News; HRW; Amnesty; Mirror; Daily Mail; UNSW Sidney

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Human Rights records of PM candidates


Link to post by Each Other of the human rights records of the prime ministerial candidates

July 2022

It will be down to two candidates by tonight (20 July 2022) but the review by EachOther of the human rights records of the four candidates is instructive. We already posted the worrying record of Rishi Sunak, currently in the lead. This link adds more detail.

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Group minutes


July 2022

The group minutes for July 2022 are attached and thanks to group member Lesley for preparing them. They are longer than you would expect from ordinary meeting minutes and serve more of a newsletter with reports on the death penalty, current UK government bills which are causing the human rights community some alarm, and a report on refugees.

Minutes (July) WordDownload
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Rishi Sunak MP


If Sunak becomes the new prime minister, what can we expect on the human rights front?

July 2022

Rishi Sunak is, at the time of writing (15 July 2022), in the lead in the race to become the new prime minister of the UK. Asking about his attitude and voting record in connection with human rights is therefore of considerable interest. It doesn’t look good.

They Work for You, the site which analyses MP’s voting records shows that Sunak ‘generally votes against laws to promote equality and human rights’. He voted against retaining the European Charter of Fundamental Rights. He is in favour of repealing the Human Rights act which has been Conservative party policy for some years now and a draft Bill of Rights is awaited.

When asked about withdrawing from the European Court of Human Rights he is quoted as saying (vaguely) ‘all options [were] on the table’.

He has voted consistently for policies to increase mass surveillance.

He is in favour – despite being the grandson of an immigrant from Africa – for sending immigrants to Rwanda.

Altogether a grim collection of negative attitudes and there seem to be no speeches or much information about his attitudes or likely policies on this important subject. There was nothing in his manicured promotion video. It very much looks like we shall get the existing policies carried forward unchanged. He seems to be part of the party which is hostile to human rights, wants to see them rolled back and to detach the country from European norms and treaties.

He is supported in the election by the MP for Salisbury Mr John Glen who likewise has a record of voting against equality and human rights issues according to They Work for You.

Sources: Open Access Government; LBC; Metro; They Work for You [we carried out an extensive search for any other relevant material but were unable to find any]

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June minutes


We are pleased to attach the minutes of our June meeting thanks to group member Lesley for preparing them. At 13 pages long they might seem overlong for minutes of a meeting which normally would run to a handful of pages. However, we do not produce a newsletter and many of the items are of interest to a wider public than just those attendees. The various bills being introduced by the government are of great concern and will curb dissent and criminalise various aspects of legitimate protest.

June minutes (Word)Download
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New HR site added


The Institute for Human Rights and Business has been added to our list of human rights sites to be found at the bottom of this page. The institute says it is ‘the leading international think tank on business and human rights. IHRB’s mission is to shape policy, advance practice, and strengthen accountability in order to make respect for human rights part of everyday business’.

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