The real impact of the European Convention on Human Rights

On 3 September 1953, the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) came into force.

Since then, it’s quietly helped protect the rights we rely on every day – including our freedom to speak out, to protest, to love who we choose and to live in peace.

It can be easy to overlook the impact of the Convention because its protections are baked into our laws and everyday lives, meaning we may never need to rely on it directly.

But for those who do, the ECHR helps hold those in power to account and ensure our rights are respected. And by protecting the rights of individuals, it strengthens those rights for all of us.

The ECHR protects your right to privacy

No real right to privacy existed in UK law before the ECHR.

Article 8 protects your right to a private life, including things like your boss snooping on your personal emails, the police searching your home without the proper authorisation, or staff at a care home reading your letters.

The ECHR protects workers’ rights

Article 11 (freedom of association) means that you can form or join a union and advocate for better working conditions without fear of reprisals from your boss, such as being sacked or missing out on pay rises for going on strike.

In the most extreme cases, the ECHR protects your right to be free from forced labour and slavery. It’s helped people like Patience Asuquo, who was forced to work for free and mistreated by her ‘employer’.

The ECHR protects victims of crime

The ECHR and the Human Rights Act (HRA) are the strongest weapons that victims of crime have, putting a duty on the police to keep us safe and protect our rights to life, freedom from torture, and inhumane or degrading treatment.

It brought justice to the 97 that died in the Hillsborough disaster. Article 2 of the Convention (right to life) won the families a new inquest that investigated the full circumstances of each death and whether the actions of the police had played a part. The inquest found that the 97 were unlawfully killed and the fans were not to blame for what happened.

The ECHR lets us access healthcare with dignity

If you are in a care home or hospital, it is the ECHR that helps you retain your independence and autonomy. You will have your privacy respected, you can have family visit you, and if you have capacity, you will be able to make decisions relating to your care.

When local councils attempted to split an elderly married couple and place them in different care homes, it was Article 8 (right to a family life) that stopped this and kept them together.

The ECHR protects children and families

It was the ECHR and the introduction of the HRA that put a duty on local authorities to keep us safe from ill-treatment. This means authorities must step in to prevent children being left with abusive parents and similarly keeps children with their parents in situations where they might otherwise be divided.

Article 8 (right to family life) ensured that a mother and child were kept together after leaving an abusive partner and were helped to find stable housing.

The ECHR protects the rights of soldiers

Our Armed Forces would be significantly less safe without the ECHR, both on and off the battlefield.

The families of soldiers who died in the unsafe Snatch Land Rovers (known as ‘mobile coffins’ in Iraq) used the ECHR to win their case against the Ministry of Defence. Article 2 (right to life) put a duty on the MoD to provide suitable equipment to keep soldiers safe.

The ECHR protects LGBTQ+ rights

The ECHR protects against discrimination and has secured many important advancements in the rights of LGBTQ+ people in the UK. It was the ECHR that overturned the ban on homosexual acts in Northern Ireland, ended the prohibition on gay people serving in the military, and helped equalise the age of consent.

The beauty of the ECHR is that it’s what’s known as a ‘living instrument,’ meaning these laws aren’t stuck in the 1950s but have developed over time to meet 21st century challenges.

But recent changes to how the ECHR is applied risks opening the door to a slow erosion of all our rights.

The new Prime Minister has an opportunity to choose a different path: one that protects our hard-won rights and freedoms now and in the future.

Take action today.