Our History: Bringing Human Rights Home

Over 50 Years of Championing Human Rights at Home

The British Institute of Human Rights (BIHR) was founded in 1970 with a clear and ambitious mission: to make universal human rights real in the UK. From our earliest days, we've worked to ensure that the rights protected in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) are not just abstract principles but active protections people can rely on in their daily lives here at home. We're focused on practical, meaningful change using human rights, working with people as an enabler.

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1970–1998: Laying the Foundations

Originally established as The Human Rights Trust, BIHR emerged as a key voice in the growing movement to bring human rights protections into UK law. At a time when individuals had to take their cases all the way to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, BIHR worked to "bring rights home."

Group of older people sat together on a sofa, leaning forward and laughing.
Photo focused on a smiling young woman with a megaphone in one hand and holding her other arm up. The background is blurred and of other people.

1998: A Defining Moment

The Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA) became a historic turning point. It made ECHR rights enforceable in UK courts and placed new legal duties on public bodies to respect people’s rights in their everyday decisions.

For BIHR, this was not the end of a campaign, it was the start of a new chapter. With the law now in place, our focus turned to helping people understand, apply, and benefit from these rights in practice.

2000–2020: Enabling Human Rights Change

Over the next two decades, BIHR became a leading force in democratising human rights across the UK. We developed a unique niche, working directly with:

  • People using public services such as health, care, housing, and education, effectively all of us at some point in our lives
  • Community and advocacy groups championing social justice
  • Public sector professionals and leaders with legal duties under the Human Rights Act.

 

Image of a young disabled woman in a wheelchair, smiling, looking at her phone. Slightly blurred background, indoors.
Group of people sat in a circle informally talking, some are blurred. In focus are a man in a wheelchair, a woman, and another man.

2020–2025: Strategic Evolution

As BIHR marked its 50th anniversary, we launched a bold new Strategic Framework to respond to an increasingly uncertain social and political climate. Amid threats to human rights protections, deepening inequality, and shrinking civic space, we sharpened our focus on real-world change, tested in the unprecedented times of the Covid pandemic, and then concerted Government policy to scrap our Human Rights Act:

  • Empowering people and partnering with communities to challenge injustice using the law
  • Enabling public services to embed human rights into policy and practice
  • Influencing national policy bringing together practical Human Rights Act analysis informed by people's real life experiences and raising voices together
  • Impact through new digital tools, a programmatic approach, and networks
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Now: More Vital Than Ever - Driving Strategic Implementation

In a time of increasing division and inequality, BIHR stands as an independent, expert, and trusted voice, committed to ensuring that human rights remain a living, breathing part of everyday life in the UK.

We believe in a future where everyone, everywhere, can live with dignity, freedom, and respect and we continue to work every day to make that future real.

 

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