As many of you will be aware, we compiled and presented a significant body of evidence to the United Nations last year to make the GANHRIGANHRI The Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions brings together and supports national human rights institutions to promote and protect human rights Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions https://ganhri.org , the UN’s National Human Rights Institution (NHRI) controlling body aware of the significant failings of Great Britain’s now thoroughly misnamed ‘Equality and Human Rights Commission’ (EHRC), especially in regard to their hostile activities against the transgender community in the UK.
This document ran at over 60 pages, and alongside a supplemental document containing further evidence was submitted as part of the EHRC’s reaccreditation process by GANHRI, in which NHRIs are rated using an ABC scale (A being top rated) based on their work in upholding the UN Human Rights Principles. This process took place in October 2022.
You can find the full dossier here, and our supplemental submission here.
These documents detailed a large number of significant failings at the EHRC, focusing on the following areas :
- Collusion with anti-trans groups and individuals
- Conflicts of Interest of the Board / Chair
- Abuse of the political appointment process
- Political interference by the UK Government & lack of independence
- Failure to comply with the governing principles for public bodies (The Nolan Principles) and Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED)
- Failure to uphold their own mandate as a human rights institution
During this process we were contacted by the EHRC and made aware that they had seen our detailed submission, and while they disagreed with some of our submission, it had been ‘very bruising’ for them.
As a result the EHRC were thoroughly lambasted by the UN, receiving the largest number of ‘recommendations’ of any country being assessed. These ‘recommendations’ are defacto instructions on things the EHRC must change in order to retain their A rating. To date, the EHRC have not implemented a single UN recommendation, and instead have completely ignored them all.
Although it was confirmed that the EHRC retained it’s A rating in Sept / Oct 2022, there is widespread speculation that this happened only as a result of a curious £1 million ‘donation’ made to the UN Commissioner for Human Rights by the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO) shortly after the announcement. We have attempted to obtain information from the FCDO as to the reasons for this donation via the Freedom of Information Act, as well as whether such donations have been made in the past, but despite instruction by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the FCDO have completely refused to supply this info, instead preferring to go around in circles claiming the request isn’t ‘specific enough’ while also confirming they hold the info.
It’s also worth noting that this dossier was also passed to a number of key ‘allies’ in UK politics, across the main political parties. Not one was interested in dealing with the issues we presented, and no press or media outlet were interested either, with the exception of Ben Hunte at Vice World News.
Since then we have written to the EHRC on a number of trans related issues, and actually met with the civil service leadership team in January 2023 to discuss the issues currently facing the trans community. While we feel this was both constructive and conducted in good faith, unfortunately the problems and trans hostile sentiment at the EHRC do not appear to lie within this level of the organisation, but rather at the very top in the Board of Commissioners and the EHRC Chair.
As a result the responses we received were entirely in line with our exceedingly low expectations.
We have also written to the UN a number of times in the last few months in regards to the declining and hostile environment against transgender & non-binary people in the UK being fostered by the UK Government , and are hoping to meet with the UN Special Envoy for Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI), Victor Madrigal-Borloz during his visit to the UK later this year to discuss the many issues affecting our community.
Our work hasn’t stopped there though – since the GANHRI submission we have continued to compile and collate further evidence of the EHRC’s trans hostile activities, and will be submitting this evidence to GANHRI shortly to demand action is now taken against the EHRC.
Suffice to say though, the EHRC have completely failed in their mandate to protect and uphold human rights.
This situation will not change until the entire Board and Chair are removed and replaced with impartial, non politically aligned nor appointed Commissioners and Chair who are actually representative of the communities the EHRC is designed to protect.
