Oscar winner Colman battles human rights abuse ‘on our doorstep’
OLIVIA Colman is starring in a new film to highlight the type of “human rights abuses” that led to the death of two-year-old Awaab Ishak in Rochdale.
Olivia, 50, plays the lawyer of a mum whose baby daughter dies due to the poor conditions of their social housing accommodation.
It is based on a real-life story and echoes the plight of little Awaab, who died in 2020 of a respiratory condition caused by mould at his housing association flat.
The Crown star Olivia said yesterday: “It’s easy to feel like we do enough, that human rights are for someone else to handle.
“We’re so accustomed to seeing human rights violations in other countries across the world that many of us believe these abuses are far away and have nothing to do with us.
Broken
“But in reality, they are happening right on our doorstep – human rights in the UK are under threat, and I hope this film will spur people on and encourage them to tune in and take action.”
She is an ambassador for Amnesty International, which made the short film Before Our Eyes as part of a campaign highlighting Britain’s “broken housing system”.
It will play in cinemas and feature in adverts on billboards, in train stations and on the London Underground.
Hustle actor Adrian Lester, 55, plays a disillusioned council worker in the film. He said the story is “painfully common in the UK” but that most people do not realise.
He added: “We often look outside
our borders when we think of human rights and don’t realise that access to housing, healthcare, food and more is deteriorating in our own country.
“And even when we do recognise this, we don’t connect it to violations of human rights happening before our eyes, on our doorstep.
“But that’s what it is. There is such blatant inequality in the lives of people here in the UK. We need to find ways to talk about these problems so that things can change.”
Amnesty UK pointed to a report last year that linked the deaths of 34 children between April 2019 and
March 2022 to homelessness and temporary accommodation. The findings, by an independent child death overview panel, were reported by an AllParty Parliamentary Group.
Sacha Deshmukh, chief executive of Amnesty UK, said: “We hope the film will be a catalyst for people across the country to join the fight for rights and say that safe housing, enough healthy food, good and timely healthcare aren’t ‘nice-to-haves’ – these are basic human rights which we expect our own Government to protect.
“We need new, firm commitments from political leaders across all parties to protect people’s basic rights and effective ways to enforce those commitments.
“It’s not just the right thing to do to protect our own citizens, it is critical to protecting the UK’s global position as a leader in rights and standards in law, and a country that the world believes practices what we preach.”
The Government has been contacted for comment.
Awaab’s Law, which requires landlords to fix reported hazards in social housing in a timely fashion or rehouse tenants in safe accommodation, is currently passing through Parliament.