Universal Periodic Review: BIHR lobbies UN Human Rights Council members

The UK’s human rights record is being examined at the United Nations on 24 May, as part of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR). All member countries of the UN participate in the process, which is conducted by the 47-member Human Rights Council on a four yearly cycle. It is an opportunity to raise human rights issues directly to the country under review. To promote our concerns BIHR coordinated a joint NGO report, which we submitted on 21 November 2011.

The Human Rights Council members are currently preparing their recommendations for the UK and BIHR has written to a number of countries, via their embassies in London, to highlight our general concern with the tone of the public debate about human rights in the UK. The letter can be viewed here. To accompany this BIHR has prepared a short briefing outlining our main concerns.

The Office for the High Commissioner of Human Rights, which is the secretariat for the Human Rights Council, produced a stakeholder summary report, which included some of the concerns we raised, including our call for the UK to guarantee during the review that the Human Rights Act will be maintained and built upon. In total the UN received 75 stakeholder submissions, which is a great improvement on the 25 civil society submissions made in 2008. All the information can be found here.

The UK Government made its written submission to the UN in March, which can be found here. It recently held a roundtable chaired by the Human Rights Minister, Lord McNally, which BIHR attended. We raised the need for the Government to show leadership on human rights and stop spreading myths and misconceptions.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has been briefing Permanent Missions, and held a joint event in Geneva with the other UK National Human Rights Institutions (Scotland and Northern Ireland) to brief Human Rights Council members. More information can be found here.

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