HRA is our birthright

VFor the Jewish community, the UK Human Rights Act feels like a birthright.

The Human Rights Act protects individuals from the power of the state. Dominic Raab’s idea of replacing it with a Bill of Rights will reduce some rights and make those remaining harder to access.

The Jewish community’s strength of feeling for human rights comes from our religion, our values and our history.

Jewish people faced persecution by the state in Spain over 500 years ago, in the middle East and North Africa during the last century and most recently during World War ll. There are Jews in the UK who trace their roots back to these communities. Many of us had grandparents murdered in the Holocaust for being Jewish. Along with Gypsies, Roma and Travellers, gay people and disabled people, the Nazi state persecuted people simply for their identity.

As the cry of “Never Again” went up following the horrors of the Holocaust, in 1948 the Jewish French lawyer, Monsieur René Cassin drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Ironically, we just celebrated the Declaration’s birthday on Friday.

It is the Human Rights Act that has ensured the enjoyment of rights by members of the UK’s Jewish community for instance allowing Jewish and Muslim families to bury their dead within 24 hours in accordance with freedom of religion. This was instead of waiting for the Coroner to treat each case chronologically by date of death. Because of this case the national Coroners’ guidance was amended to accommodate Muslim and Jewish religious law so that their burials could be expedited.

Yet this is exactly one aspect of the Human Rights Act that Dominic Raab wants to get rid of.

We all benefit from the rights evidenced in other cases, many of which do not even go to court to reach a solution. Dominic Raab speaks of the importance of protecting women affected by domestic violence but that is exactly what the Human Rights Act is already doing. Other benefits to ordinary people have been getting sufficient care hours, getting disabled people’s housing adapted, couples being able to live in the same care home and same-sex marriage, to name a few. Debora Singer MBE

René Cassin