What's Going on in Human Rights: September 2023

Hi everyone! We are so excited to welcome back our Amnesty members, and to see some new faces in our meetings. In the coming weeks we’re going to settle on a campaign for the year, and there will be a vote in week 3.

In this blog post I would first like to talk about what is happening with regards to UK refugees, as this was our campaign last year. Last week, Suella Braverman suggested that the asylum system in the UK will become unsustainable if 'simply being gay, or a woman, and fearful of discrimination in your country of origin is sufficient to qualify for protection.' There has been criticism of this statement from many sources. The LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall pointed out that protection for women and queer people has been settled for years, under the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol. Sir Elton John has also spoken out, and said how rhetoric like this is 'further legitimising hate and violence' against LGBTQ+ people.

The most important voices in this issue are, of course, those of refugees themselves. Monsur, a gay man from Bangladesh, where same-sex sexual activity is punishable by imprisonment, explained that after being in the UK for over a decade he has still not been granted asylum. He says a court claimed he was 'manufacturing' his sexuality so he would be allowed to stay in the UK. It is evident that even as it stands there is anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination in the system, so any suggestion of reducing the protections poses a serious threat to the rights of queer refugees in Britain. Another asylum seeker, a trans man from Pakistan, talked of the mental health risks of not allowing LGBTQ+ people to claim asylum. This was something he worried about with regards to trans people being returned to their home countries where they would be forced to de-transition for their safety. Finally, Mazyar Shirali, an Iranian Christian LGBT activist, called Braverman 'inhuman' for her statement.

This sense of inhumanity goes to the heart of the problem with the rhetoric we've seen being directed towards refugees. At Amnesty UoB, we believe that the decision making behind the asylum system should be motivated by compassion and a desire to protect human rights. Refugees should be looked at as human beings in a position of vulnerability. The idea of refusing asylum to people fleeing persecution goes against everything Amnesty International stands for, and it is frightening to see a member of government downplaying the risk of discrimination in the name of creating a more 'sustainable' asylum system. Is an asylum system that refuses to protect the persecuted really worth sustaining?

In other human rights news, one of the suggested campaigns for the coming year is on the Climate crisis, so I thought I would share some more hopeful news on this topic. In the past month we have seen activists using the courts to force their governments to act. A group of young people from Montana have just won a lawsuit, arguing that building a new gas power plant was barred by the state constitution, which enshrined climate protections into law. The young people all suffered from asthma, so were badly impacted by air pollution. This case makes it clear that human rights, particularly the right to health, are significant in the fight against government climate inaction.

In Portugal, six young people have filed a lawsuit against 32 governments, the UK is amongst those governments, as are all of the EU member states. The young people are aged between 11-24, and their argument is that their human rights, like the right to life, privacy, family life and to be free from discrimination, are being violated due to governments' reluctance to fight climate change.

At UoB Amnesty we are excited to see human rights law being used to combat the climate crisis. It is also especially impressive to see so many young people at the forefront of this legal battle. We hope to take inspiration from such young people, in whatever campaigns we work on in future.

---

By Charlie O'Keeffe