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A Defining Moment for Universal Human Rights
This week at the end of February 2026, the UK Government sits around the table at the Council of Europe (COE) taking part in a political process aimed at limiting the scope of universal protections under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
In response, BIHR has brought together civil society voices from across the UK with one clear message: this matters — to all of us.
Our new video explains why what’s unfolding at the COE sets a dangerous precedent. Governments (the very bodies bound by human rights law) are now discussing how to narrow those protections. The speed of this shift, from informal conversations to a coordinated, Europe-wide political declaration, carries profound implications.
This is why civil society is speaking now with clarity and with unity.
How Did We Get Here?
International Human Rights Day on 10 December 2025 should have been a moment of reaffirmation. Instead, it marked the launch of a fast-tracked political process that could reshape the future of our universal rights.
Ministers from 27 Council of Europe countries, including the UK, agreed to explore potential “limits” to how the ECHR protects people. The focus:
- Article 3 — protection from torture, inhuman or degrading treatment
- Article 8 — the right to private and family life, home and correspondence
This current discussion centres on migration — specifically, the power of states to remove people. But the evidence base for restricting these rights is being robustly challenged. Organisations working in this field including the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights have raised serious concerns. The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) itself did not attend the meeting but submitted a factsheet questioning the proportionality of the process.
The Timeline: The Chișinău Process
This political momentum has triggered what is now known as the Chișinău Process.
On a compressed timeline:
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Government experts, through the Steering Committee for Human Rights (CDDH), are drafting analysis.
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Key meetings take place in February. The Second Extraordinary meeting of the is CDDH takes place from the 25-27th February.
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A full draft Political Declaration is due by 22 March.
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Adoption is planned for 14–15 May 2026 as the Chișinău Declaration.
A Political Declaration may not be legally binding but it can pave the way for an Additional Protocol — the only formal route to amending the Convention itself. This is how significant legal change begins.
Why this Matters
The evidence does not support the claims which triggered this process - that the UK’s powers are being excessively curtailed by the ECHR. Evidence below from the ECtHR and the Bonavero Institute shows:
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Immigration applications account for just 1.5% of all cases before the Court.
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Violations are found in only 6% of those cases.
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In 45 years, the Court has ruled just three times that UK immigration rules breached the Convention.
Cases about immigration form a tiny fraction of the European Court of Human Rights’ work. Findings against the UK are rare. Yet the narrative suggests sweeping constraints on government power. Politics is at play. It is easier, in a heated political moment, to frame migration as the problem and weakening rights protections as the solution.
But the pressures people feel every day in the UK - NHS backlogs, overstretched social care, housing shortages, rising insecurity and inequality - will not be solved by chipping away at universal rights. They require serious policy solutions, not scapegoating.
Truth still matters. And the truth is this: the case for limiting people's legal protections is vastly overstated and universal human rights should matter to us all.
Where This Path Leads
This is how the playbook begins. Not with dramatic exits. Not with bold withdrawals. But with a steady drip of language “concerns” “exceptions” “reforms” “reasonable limits.”
Erosion starts at the margins. It rarely stays there.
Human rights protections were written into law precisely to guard against political moments like this. Undermining universal protections on the basis of a politically instrumentalised narrative is not a small adjustment, it is a slippery, dangerous slope.
Civil Society Speaks
Across the UK, 23 civil society organisations have come together to say clearly:
We do not have to accept a narrative — however frightening and urgent it is made to seem — that allows those in power to override universal human rights.
Universal rights are not conditional. They are not negotiable in moments of political pressure.
They belong to all of us.
Our video brings together voices from across the UK explaining why this matters and why now is the time to defend the universality of human rights.
Related information
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