Honour our human rights agreements

Attacks on our rights

This Government has demonstrated that it is not committed to upholding our international human rights’ obligations.

The Illegal Migration Bill was rushed through Parliament despite the former Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, admitting that its provisions may not be compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

The UN Refugee Agency raised concerns that the Bill ‘would be a clear breach of the Refugee Convention and would undermine a longstanding, humanitarian tradition of which the British people are rightly proud.’

Now, the Government is pushing through the Rwanda Treaty and the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill. The Bill states that UK authorities should consider Rwanda a safe country for asylum seekers to be sent to.

This is despite the UK Supreme Court ruling that asylum seekers sent to Rwanda would face a real risk of ill-treatment as a result of being returned to their country of origin, conflicting with our commitments under international human rights treaties. It is also despite the fact that the Rwandans are still being granted asylum by the Home Office over “well-founded” fears of persecution if they were returned to Rwanda.

It is clear that the Government is happy to cast aside our international treaties on human rights.

But the public are not on their side. Polling conducted by Savanta revealed that more than four out of five people believe it is important to be able to challenge the Government if it violates people’s rights.

Our view

We believe the UK should obey international law and honour its international agreements.

Our human rights should not be things that can be ditched when they are inconvenient. Human rights must be universal. The Government should not have the power to pick and choose who deserves human rights.

After the horrors of the Second World War, it was the United Kingdom that led the charge to establish protections for fundamental human rights. Now the current Government is proposing trashing the values that we signed up for.

Breaking international law and violating human rights will damage our reputation on the world stage. 

Doing so makes it harder for us to stand up to rogue nations that commit human rights’ abuses.

That’s why we are campaigning for the Government to commit to upholding our human rights, instead of violating international human rights agreements.