Protecting our Human Rights Act

We all want to live safe and well, knowing that the authorities will support our rights; our Human Rights Act helps make this happen.

At BIHR we see the positive value of our Human Rights Act every day in our work with people accessing services, community and advocacy groups, and staff working in public services.

Yet, these stories that are rarely heard in national debates about our law. Rather, successive UK governments have developed an increasingly hostile approach to the Human Rights Act. It is important to remember that our Human Rights Act limits public power, and so it is not always popular with those who have that power. However, the risks to our protections in the Human Rights Act and the connected European Convention on Human Rights being lost are now a political reality.

Human rights are universal, they belong to all of us, this is at the heart of our Human Rights Act, which has supported people across the UK. It is vital that discussions about our Human Rights Act and its future focus on the actual law and people's real-life experiences of how this carefully crafted Act helps them live with equal dignity and respect.

The real stories of change developed through our programmes with people, are all about the human faces of our Human Rights Act. It is this evidence that is often missing from traditional approaches. BIHR’s policy model is to amplify the voices of those we support, bringing their lived experience together with our expertise on human rights law and practice.