Weekly Human Rights News: 20-10-23

We’re working with Leeds & York Partnership Foundation Trust on a Practice Leads programme, designed to support senior staff to embed a culture of respect for human rights across all services. Asked how they would describe the workshop in one word, participants said, “insightful”, “thought-provoking”, “empowering” and even “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”!

In June 2023, the Scottish Government opened its public consultation on introducing a new Human Rights Bill for Scotland. We submitted a letter in response drawing on our experience of working with individuals, public bodies and policy-makers to put human rights into action. We welcomed positive steps to build on the UK’s legal human rights protections with the Human Rights Act as a blueprint and a foundation. However, we also raised concerns about the long and complicated nature of the consultation that excluded many people from participating and meant that even legal experts struggled to respond.

The European Court of Human Rights said Italy breached the rights of residents forced to live in polluted areas

In 1994, a “waste management crisis” was declared in Campania, Italy which lasted for 15 years. Rubbish collections were repeatedly interrupted and rubbish accumulated along public roads, leading in some cases to closures of schools, universities and local markets. 19 residents brought a case to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) claiming the crisis, and Italy’s failure to resolve it, breached their Article 8 rights to private life and home. The ECtHR agreed, and saw official documents that found the waste management crisis had put people’s health in danger and increased the risk of developing cancer or congenital malformations across generations.

Read the press release

This week was London Challenge Poverty Week

Every year, London Challenge Poverty Week is coordinated by 4in10: London’s Child Poverty Network as an opportunity to come together and highlight the injustice of poverty in the capital city. Throughout the week, we’ve shared resources on our social media including the cost-of-living video series from our RITES Committee members that discuss the way human rights can and have been used to challenge unfair economic policies. We also shared our London Communities programme, which is designed to support communities experiencing disadvantage and discrimination to claim their human rights. The programme will kick off with our first Human Rights Open Day in Southwark on Wednesday 1^st November.

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