When compared to the women experiencing mass rape in Darfur, peace activists locked up and lashed in Saudi Arabia, or the torture and detention of dissidents in North Korea, the UK’s record seems pretty good, as British politicians often boast. But there is a debate raging within the UK about the need for human rights protections at home, and an increasingly vocal lobby that wants Britain removed from the European Court of Human Rights’ jurisdiction.
Scepticism towards “human rights” at home is entrenched in our public discourse. Spend any time reading or watching the UK media's coverage of human rights at home, and you’ll find overwhelming emphasis on the negative. In a review of broadsheet and tabloid newspapers, political blogs and parliamentary speeches from 2013, for example, researchers found that only 30% of content supported human rights protections in the UK. In England, that figure was under 20%.
