Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Lord Bishop of Durham Excerpts

Monday 11th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay of St Johns, for securing this debate, and for the way in which she has stood for these issues for many years.

The United Nation’s adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was a milestone in the history of our world. It marked a global commitment to put human beings above conflict, above the politics of division and above economic gain, granting each individual dignity without discrimination. Though we are 75 years on, promoting the human rights laid out in the declaration remains as vital today as it was in 1948.

The principles and values of human rights lie in the conviction that each human being is unique, made in the image of God and loved by God. Each person is valuable for who they are, not what they are able to do. Thus it applies to every infant and child, and to every frail elderly person, as much as to those who are regarded as wholly fit and able.

In the first place, if we are to promote human rights globally, it is essential that we uphold them in our own nation. Article 16 of the UN declaration states:

“The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State”.


As raised in the debate last Friday in this Chamber, brought by my friend the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, family is crucial to our flourishing as humans. However, this is regrettably not reflected in all our Government’s policies. The two-child limit, for example, continues to push families into poverty, withholding support for children due simply to the number of siblings they have.

I now raise my concerns regarding the recent decision by the Government to override their commitments to global human rights agreements. Although the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is not totally legally binding, it is a declaration of the core values that underpin the human rights agreements that the UK has since committed to in a range of international agreements and in the foundations of many of our laws.

Rwanda is a country that is close to my heart. I have visited it 20 times since 1997. It has a deeply painful history of suffering, yet I have observed at first hand how, as a nation, it has rebuilt itself in the past 30 years, bringing those who violated the human rights of others in the past to justice. It demonstrated to the world a remarkable way of handling this, at all levels of society, through its Gacaca courts. However, given reports from Human Rights Watch, as well as the United States Government, on the violation of human rights within Rwanda in recent years, questions are now being raised that our Government can simply rule that the country is indeed safe for refugees and asylum seekers to be sent to.

On the face of the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill lies a declaration from the Home Secretary that he is unable to state whether the Bill is compatible with the UK’s human rights obligations. In producing such a Bill, we are disregarding the humanity of asylum seekers as fellow human beings—fellow human beings who are equal in dignity and possess the same freedoms as ourselves.

I remind the House that this is not an issue of boats; it is an issue of people. As a nation, we have a proud history of upholding and promoting human rights across the globe. Rightly, these human rights apply no matter the nationality a person is born to, no matter their method of travel or entry to a country, and no matter how many siblings they have.

Human rights also always imply human responsibility for one another. If we each want these rights, then we also each must defend them for others. We cannot decide to remove rights from others without diminishing ourselves and accepting that we thus remove those rights from ourselves. We have been at the forefront since 1948 of promoting human rights. Will His Majesty’s Government commit to continuing to lead the way, rather than, as currently appears, stepping backwards from that leading role?