At BIHR we work across the whole range of internationally defined human rights. Ensuring people are treated with dignity and respect by those with public power underpins our commitment to putting universal human rights at the heart of people's everyday experiences across the UK. We use the power of our domestic legislation, the UK's Human Rights Act 1998, to bring these rights to life in their everyday lives.

Find out more about the Human Rights Act, how it works inside and outside the courts, and the rights we all have, in our Explainer and video.

The UK’s Human Rights Act brings 16 protections from the European Convention on Human Rights into our law (the Convention draws on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, first set down by the United Nations after WW2). As the rights in our law were originally written in the Convention (which the UK played a leading role in drafting), they are sometime called "Convention Rights". However, it is important to remember these have been pulled into our law, and it is the Human Rights Act which creates domestic legal duties to secure the implementation of these rights.

But what about economic and social rights?

Human rights are sometimes thought about as being about as covering two areas: civil and political rights, and economic, social and cultural rights.

• Civil and political rights tend to be thought about as focusing on people's freedoms, enabling us to take part in the way our societies are run without fear of oppression or discrimination. For example, the right to vote and to fair trials are usually described as civil and political rights.
• Economic, social and cultural rights tend to be thought of as the rights we need to live with dignity, safety and health. For example, rights to health standards, access to food, water, and housing.

Traditionally our 16 HRA rights have been called civil and political. However, it is really important to remember that the rights in the HRA are "living instruments". This means the principles that they cover need to adapt to our societies progress and develop, e.g. privacy includes issues around CCTV cameras, even though these weren't around in 1950 when the rights were written. We've also seen how rights to not be treated in an inhuman or degrading way, include being destitute, and assisting with housing and safe accommodation. As the European Court of Human Rights has itself noted, “there is no watertight division separating" economic, social and cultural rights away from the rights in the HRA (and Convention).

So even though a specific issue or area of concern may not be explicitly named in the 16 HRA rights, don't discount the law. In many instances the HRA rights will be very relevant. This is especially because they apply to all our interactions with public bodies, which covers a range of issues such as health, education, social welfare, housing, etc. 

The human rights issues we work on

In fact, at BIHR the vast majority of our change through human rights work focuses on areas traditionally seen as economic and social, such as health, housing, education, care provision and social support.

We believe the potential of the Human Rights Act to enable people to flourish across all aspects of their lives has not yet been realised. We are committed to enabling people to make best use of their protections and the duties of public officials under the Human Rights Act, using this legal framework to bring about social change beyond the courtrooms.

Through our work we demonstrate the value of human rights for people in their everyday lives, which also makes a unique contribution by demonstrating why the Human Rights Act, its rights and duties, are important for us all, and vital to the UK’s position as a modern democracy. Find out more about our work to ensure people's vocies are heard in reviews of the Human Rights Act, here.

The issues we address are driven by those we support. You can find our more about broad areas of our human rights work here, including issues and groups of people we work with:

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