Legal Frameworks

From upholding equal rights, to helping end modern slavery, protecting military personnel to ending corporal punishment in schools, the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) has given all of us the tools to demand we are treated fairly and with dignity in our society.

But the positive legacy of the ECHR is at risk of unravelling. Some politicians want to pull the UK out of the ECHR and roll back our rights. We need to protect this legal framework.

What is the European Convention on Human Rights?

The ECHR was drafted 75 years ago, following the horrors of WWII. The UK was key to this, and one of the first nations to sign it.

Since then, so many of us have benefited from its protections:

Families seeking justice after the Hillsborough disaster
Domestic violence survivors
Military personnel
Victims of modern slavery
People seeking protection from torture and persecution
Keeping families together
Protections and justice for victims of the Windrush scandal
Workers holding the government to account.

The ECHR is there when we need it most, to defend people's rights in the face of state failure or abuse. In doing so, the ECHR upholds important human values of security, equality, safety and solidarity.

Find out more here

Our rights under threat

Sadly, some people in power want to abandon our commitment to the ECHR.

They claim that the ECHR is hampering the UK’s ability to control immigration.

But this is simply not true.

Human rights are the answer

Human rights are universal - they belong to all of us. We cannot let bad actors malign the ECHR and undermine our rights for their own gain.

Protecting migrants, survivors of abuse, and those facing injustice protects everyone. Now more than ever.

Leaving the Convention would be unprecedented. It would put the UK alongside Russia and Belarus as the only European countries outside the ECHR.

It would also jeopardise the Good Friday Agreement, the cornerstone of peace in Northern Ireland.

Human rights cannot be cast aside like this.

It is at times like this, when rights are under threat and those with power are seeking to abuse it, that we need these protections most.

Find out how you can protect the ECHR, stop people in power taking away ordinary people's ability to hold the powerful to account, and defend your right to live freely and with dignity.