If you’ve been the victim of a human rights abuse – if you’ve been imprisoned without trial or had your private life violated – you probably don’t need convincing that our freedoms should be formally protected by law. But here in the oldest unbroken democracy in the world, where many of us have the luxury of treating human rights as abstract ideals, we can sometimes forget that they were born from all-too-real suffering and injustice.
Sixty years ago today the European Convention on Human Rights entered into force. The Convention was our answer to the unimaginable horrors of the Holocaust; arising from the ruins of a continent that had ripped itself apart and in which millions from persecuted minorities had been brutally murdered. A core part of our “never again” promise, it affords legal protection for our most precious values – freedom from torture, slavery and arbitrary imprisonment; of speech and belief; the right to life. People have fought and died for these rights throughout history and continue to do so today..
In Britain, sections of Parliament and the media swamp us with myths about the Convention, continually attempting to devalue it. Surrounded by this toxic debate, we must remember its origins as a response to genocide in the heart of Europe. In the last six decades it has served as a vital check on oppression and arbitrary rule and it continues to act as a beacon to newer democracies. At home Liberty has used the Convention, and the Human Rights Act, to fight for victims of state abuse and neglect who wouldn’t otherwise have had any hope of justice..
Some are thrown by the “European” label, but it was our wartime leader Winston Churchill who, during the fight against Hitler, recognised: “When this struggle ends with the enthronement of human rights, racial persecution will be ended”. And Britain played a pivotal role in the Convention’s birth, with Conservative lawyers helping to draft its provisions. Ripping it up would mark a sombre turn towards diluted rights contingent on citizenship. As soon as we lose sight of people as human beings everywhere, rather than holders of the right passport, we fatally compromise the very concept of universal rights.
Today is a celebration and we continue to fight for these fundamental values with energy and conviction. Here’s hoping that another sixty years from now, the cynicism and spin will be distant memories and respect for individual human dignity and equal treatment will remain the cornerstone of our way of life.
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