Mr President

This is a statement on behalf of the Equality and Human Rights Commission of Great Britain, the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and the Scottish Human Rights Commission.

We welcome the report of the Special Rapporteur and share many of her concerns.

The report highlights how race and ethnicity shape outcomes in every area of people’s lives, including education, employment, housing and criminal justice.

It illustrates the persistence in our societies of structural barriers which lead to unequal outcomes for people from ethnic minorities, even in the absence of discernible racial prejudice.

The UK government’s Race Disparity Audit, the Race Equality Framework and Action Plan for Scotland and the Northern Ireland Racial Equality Strategy have helped to raise awareness of these issues.

Yet actions taken have largely focussed on isolated aspects of discrimination, rather than a comprehensive and integrated approach.

The Special Rapporteur highlights the alarming racial harassment that Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children continue to experience in schools, their low attainment levels and high exclusion rates.

This is exacerbated by inequalities in access to housing, including inadequate site provision for Traveller communities, and the over-representation of people from ethnic minorities in the criminal justice system.

She also highlights the role of intersectional discrimination, noting the disproportionately adverse effects of combined social security reforms on ethnic minority women. 

We echo the Special Rapporteur’s call for the UK and devolved governments to set up comprehensive strategies and action plans to address race inequalities across all nations and government sectors.

These strategies should have adequate resources allocated to concrete actions, including measures in the education system to tackle prejudice and promote good relations.

The strategies should also have clear accountability structures and involve people from ethnic minority communities in their design, monitoring and implementation.

The recent launch of a national strategy to tackle inequalities facing Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities in England is a welcome step, as is the Scottish Government’s Ministerial Working Group on Gypsies and Travellers, which is currently developing a national action plan. 

Both efforts should be monitored carefully.

Gaps in the legal framework for tackling discrimination also need to be addressed, including the lack of protection from intersecting and multiple discrimination and continuing weaknesses in the Public Sector Equality Duty.

The three Commissions stand ready to assist in the implementation of these recommendations.

Thank you Mr President.

Mr President,

This is a statement on behalf of the Equality and Human Rights Commission of Great Britain, the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and the Scottish Human Rights Commission.

We welcome the report of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights and share many of the concerns outlined in the report.

We consider that Professor Alston’s findings starkly demonstrate the disproportionate impact of austerity measures on those already living in or facing the threat of poverty.

This includes women, ethnic minorities, children, single parents, asylum seekers and disabled people.

The report illustrates that the policies of successive governments have eroded the right to social security and have led to increased poverty.

Professor Alston also notes that increasing use of food banks and rising levels of homelessness have resulted from social security policies such as benefit sanctioning and the transition to Universal Credit.

This is in breach of the human right to an adequate standard of living, as per Article 11(1) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

The sanctions regime has been a constant source of concern to the three Commissions and contributed to the 2017 findings of the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities which described ‘grave and systematic violations of the rights of persons with disabilities’.

The Commissions of Northern Ireland and Scotland particularly welcome the attempts of the devolved administrations to mitigate the worst effects of social security reforms.

However, these ad hoc measures cannot and do not fully address all of the issues, particularly in the long-term.

We echo the recommendation of the Special Rapporteur that the National Audit Office assess the cumulative social impact of tax and spending decisions since 2010, in order to identify what would be required to restore an effective social safety net.

We offer our assistance to the UK government in realising this recommendation.

The Commissions are disappointed with UK government’s response to the Special Rapporteur’s report.

We urge the UK government to review its welfare and spending policies to ensure the most significant impacts are not felt most by those they are designed to support, and to work constructively with all stakeholders – including the UK’s National Human Rights Institutions – to improve the protection of economic and social rights in the United Kingdom.

Thank you Mr President.

Mr President,

I make this statement on behalf of the UK’s three ‘A status’ National Human Rights Institutions. Almost exactly one year ago today, this Council adopted the outcome of the UK’s third Universal Periodic Review (UPR).

At that time we provided a statement in this Chamber calling for greater engagement with the UPR process going forward, and for governments across the UK to publish clear and actionable implementation plans.

Though this has not yet happened, we are encouraged by the update report published by the UK government in August, and the Scottish government’s detailed response to each UPR recommendation, published earlier this year. The absence of the NI Assembly has hampered progress towards implementation of the UPR recommendations in Northern Ireland and is a serious source of concern.

It would be easier to determine progress going forward if a clear framework is published as a basis for implementation. We offer our practical support to UK and devolved governments in the development of UPR implementation plans, utilising the best practice honed by other institutions and Member States represented here today. We believe these plans should set out commitments to specific actions and clear mechanisms for monitoring and reporting on progress.

We hope that this process can begin without delay, with meaningful input from stakeholders across the country. Doing so ensures the continued credibility of this vital process, both at home and internationally.

We believe that developing a system of durable and effective follow-up will better enable the UK to fulfil the UPR’s objective of improving the human rights situation on the ground, and hope to be able to provide positive updates to the Council in this regard in 2019.

Thank you.

Mr President

This is a statement on behalf of the Equality and Human Rights Commission of Great Britain, the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and the Scottish Human Rights Commission.

The United Kingdom has signed and ratified the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which includes obligations relating to hate crime.

We remain seriously concerned about increases in incidences of racially motivated hate crime in the UK in recent years, in particular following the EU referendum of June 2016 and recent terror attacks in England.

The National Police Chief’s Council reported a 57% increase in reports of hate crime in the aftermath of the EU referendum. Race remains the most commonly recorded motivation for hate crime in 2016/17, at 78%, and shows an increase of 27% over the previous year.

We are concerned that barriers to reporting and recording hate crime continue to exist across the UK. There are challenges with the existing legal framework, which has developed in a piecemeal fashion. The main provisions relied upon in legal proceedings in relation to online hate crime predate the era of mass social media use.

We call on the UK government:

1. To undertake a full-scale review of the legislation on hate crime without further delay. We suggest that any review of the legislation includes provisions on aggravated offences and the enhanced sentencing system, to ensure consistency across different protected characteristics; 

We call on the UK and Scottish governments:

1. To ensure the legislation gives full consideration to the right to freedom of expression in private electronic communications;
2. To ensure that monitoring and data collection methods are consistent across the UK, to allow for comparative and chronological analysis;
3. To evaluate reporting and recording processes used by the police and other agencies, in consultation with  local communities;
4. To implement a review of third-party reporting, to evaluate impact and sustainability, highlight geographical and thematic gaps and ensure consistency with police recording systems; and
5. To ensure police refer all victims of hate crimes and incidents to relevant support services. Such services should be adequately funded.

Thank you Mr President.

Mr President,

This is a statement on behalf of the Equality and Human Rights Commission of Great Britain, the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and the Scottish Human Rights Commission.

Children and families are on the move in almost unprecedented numbers. The UN estimates that by the end of 2015, 65.3 million individuals were forcibly displaced worldwide as a result of persecution, conflict, generalized violence, or human rights violations. This is 5.8 million more people than in the previous year.

Globally we are facing the highest recorded number of unaccompanied migrant children since the Second World War. This presents a significant challenge to the relevant existing infrastructure. In relation to unaccompanied migrant children in local authority care in the UK, research indicates that around 13% went missing at least once in 2015.

The UK is in the process of negotiating its exit from the European Union. At this moment of significant constitutional change, it is important to set out a positive vision for the kind of country we want to be after we have left the EU.

We want the UK to retain its status as a world leader on human rights.

We urge that any new asylum arrangements that the UK Government agrees with other countries must comply with the Refugee Convention and European Convention on Human Rights, and enable cross-border cooperation, and in particular protect child victims of trafficking.

The UK should ensure that service providers and other agencies provide effective support for unaccompanied asylum seeking children. We call on the UK government:

• immediately after the child’s arrival, to appoint a guardian, as the main safeguard of their best interests and wellbeing, before any other proceedings take place
• to introduce a statutory duty to record and report migrant children who go missing from care
• to cease the detention of child asylum seekers
• to ensure that children seeking refugee status receive appropriate protection and humanitarian assistance
• to ensure that, where a person’s age is uncertain and that there are reasons to believe they are a child, they are presumed to be a child until their age has been assessed objectively by an independent expert.

Thank you Mr President.