10 December is the time to celebrate Human Rights Day. It is a time to remember those who are in prison or under torture in countries that do not respect human rights. It is also a time to take stock of how the UK Government is doing on human rights in this country.
Prisoners of Conscience
An international charity was set up in 1962 for prisoners of conscience (POC), defined as
“People who have exercised a non-violent act of conscience to uphold their or other’s human rights, for which they have been, or are likely to be imprisoned, persecuted or subjected to suffering, or have fled from their country to avoid such imprisonment, persecution or suffering.”
On the 60th anniversary a report has been issued:
“Since 1962, we have supported tens of thousands of prisoners of conscience and their family members, awarding grants across over 70 countries. These courageous men and women have participated in protests, stood up against persecution, provided humanitarian aid and called for political, social and legal reforms in the face of corruption and censorship. The findings within this report are a testament to their courage and integrity.”
Amnesty International has plenty of information on individual prisoners of conscience, both living and dead. I first came across Amnesty groups in the 1960s in their very effective
campaigns to support those imprisoned by the apartheid government, notably leaders like Nelson Mandela.
A famous political prisoner of today is the Russian, Alexei Navalny, opponent of Putin and anti-corruption campaigner, who has been held in prison for nearly three years now. There was some controversy last year when Amnesty demoted him from the POC list on the grounds of anti-immigrant views expressed more than a decade ago. This was strongly criticised as mission creep, as moving beyond its core POC mission to campaigning on other human rights for which there are other focused organisations. Amnesty retracted the demotion and issued a statement explaining why.
EU and UK Human Rights
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was first adopted 10 December 1948, 74 years ago. Some countries abstained and did not sign: notably countries of the USSR and Saudi Arabia. There has since been much discussion among Islamic scholars as to whether it is compatible with Sharia law. In most countries that signed, these human rights have been gradually incorporated into national laws. It is important that such a declaration is not just hot air and wishful thinking, but is given legal teeth and a court to try cases.
In Europe this was done by the Council of Europe in 1959 through the Convention of Human Rights. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg was set to try cases concerning human rights. It is important not to confuse this court with the supreme court of the EU (CJEU). Under Brexit, the UK Government has shown antipathy towards the CJEU, for instance refusing the EU wish to use it for settling disputes over trade across the Irish border.
The Council of Europe is a wider body than the EU, and contains countries not in the EU like Norway, Switzerland, and the UK. Russia also joined the Council in 1996 but has just terminated membership in September 2022. 17,450 cases had been brought to the attention of the ECHR concerning atrocities in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
How does UK stand on this?
Many of the articles of both the UN Declaration and the European Convention on Human Rights are incorporated into the 1998 UK law on Human Rights. But some human rights lawyers still need to make use of the ECHR, especially when challenging rulings of UK government. There is now another bill proposed in Parliament to replace this law with a new one, on the rationale that the 1998 law made it too difficult to deport foreign criminals.
Suella Braverman, once again Home Secretary, has declared that UK should now withdraw from the ECHR. This is because lawyers working for migrants are using ECHR precedents to block her scheme for deporting Channel migrants to Rwanda.
This is deplorable because the ECHR is an impartial and experienced judicial institution that builds up case law beyond the passing fancies of politicians. According to the Court’s statistics, there have been 563 judgments concerning the UK up to the end of 2021. Of these, over half (327) found at least one violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, and about a quarter (144) found no violation. I know about one of these (Unjust pensions for Expats) as a British expatriate brought a case in 2011 against the UK government for freezing our State pensions – and the ECHR did not take it further as it said this fell under national governments decision-making, not human rights.
Britons are still making use of the ECHR. It is astounding that Owen Patterson, the Brexiteer politician who was exposed in a lobbying scandal last year, is now taking his case against the ruling of the parliamentary standards commissioner to the ECHR. His lawyer claims this is the only option since rights are not yet “repatriated” to a new UK law.
If UK politicians like Braverman have their way and take UK out of the ECHR, they may live to regret such a move when they find, like Owen Patterson, they have some need of it.
