Blog post from our new Communications Director, Nicky Hawkins:
It’s easy to see human rights as being important overseas, in war-torn areas and developing nations, and to forget that we rely on them here in the UK too.
Most of the time, we take it for granted that our human rights will be respected – that we’ll be protected and treated with dignity.
For me, a quick glance at the news reminds me just how much we need the safety net that our human rights give us. Abuse in care homes and – news stories that shock and anger me – show that people’s rights in the UK are not always respected in practice.
I’m so pleased to have joined Equally Ours to make sure we keep talking about our human rights, the benefits they provide us and the ways we can use them to make our society safer and fairer.
Equally Ours is joining forces with a range of fantastic UK charities that work tirelessly to protect people’s rights – from organisations making sure decent care is available to all who need it, to children’s charities protecting our most vulnerable.
We’re looking to talk to more groups and organisations to help bring human rights to life every day.
Having worked in a number of busy charity comms and campaigns teams, I know how challenging it can be to juggle different priorities to create messages that grab people. There’s always too much to say and far too little space and time to say it. Introducing extra issues can feel impossible.
So we want to start by talking to organisations about human rights and their work, to share the research we’ve done so far and explore how we can work together.
Today we’re launching a weekly email round-up of human rights stories in the news. It shows where human rights make the headlines – and where they’re a vital missing part of the story. For me it’s a quick reminder of just how much we need our human rights every day. to get the weekly bulletin.