For years now, Human Rights Watch has been warning about attacks against human rights and democracy by the UK government, but the situation is worsening. The right to protest peacefully is under threat, as pro-Palestine protesters and climate activists have experienced recently.
The government has also adopted laws that violate rights and proposed significantly weakening human rights protections in domestic law, as homelessness, destitution and hunger soar. Yasmine Ahmed, HRW's UK director, warns in an interview with The Guardian that the behavior of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his government start to ‘look very much like authoritarianism’. “With previous governments there was always an attempt to at least try to appear as if they were complying with domestic or international human rights law and to respect the courts and human rights institutions,” Ahmed told the Guardian. “Now there is no attempt to do this – in fact, it’s quite the opposite.” Yasmine Ahmed has witnessed an unprecedented attack on human rights in the United Kingdom and on international law since she joined HRW in November 2020.