BRITAIN could be on the verge of renouncing its international human rights obligations, civil liberties campaigners united in warning yesterday.
Liberty, Amnesty International, Freedom from Torture, Inclusion London and Human Rights Watch came together to press for greater attention to human rights issues during the general election campaign.
The election is being watched around the world, since it represents a “fork in the road” in terms of the country sticking to its commitments, they said.
Freedom from Torture chief executive Sonya Sceats said that Britain’s membership of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) now being in contention “illustrates how diminished our politics has come to be.”
The Tory right has been pushing hard for Britain to leave the ECHR and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has equivocated on the issue, while Labour has pledged to abide by the convention.
Liberty advocacy director Sam Grant pointed out that recent years have seen “some of our most valued rights and protections shrink across the board.
“New laws have reduced workers’ rights, migrants’ rights, the right to vote and our right to protest, and these will continue to impact all of us long after the general election.”
Amnesty International chief executive Sacha Deshmukh said the “world is watching this election” because it is seen as “a turning point of whether the UK believes in consistency and support for international frameworks and for the international human rights order or whether a path, which the world feels we have taken a first step down, to abandon an order that we helped build actually becomes the road that this country runs down.”
Human Rights Watch added that the outcome of the election and the new government’s choice of approach would represent “a critical moment.”
Director Yasmine Ahmed said that Britain should “recommit to the international rules-based order, an order that it was a foundational player in establishing,” using a phrase more often associated with US hegemonic demands.
The comments came as World Refugee Day was marked yesterday by a coalition of charities and human rights organisations, co-ordinated by Together With Refugees, gathering outside Parliament for what was described as a kickabout to call for a “fair shot” for people seeking asylum in Britain.
Succession actor Brian Cox, who is supporting the campaign, said: “The chaos and cruelty of the current asylum system cannot be allowed to continue.
“The next government has the chance to make a major reset on how the UK treats refugees.”
