Human rights in the United Kingdom are set out in common law, with its strongest roots being in the English Bill of Rights 1689, as well as the European legislation. At the same time, the UK has also had a history of both de jure and de facto discrimination, and, in recent history, occasional violations of basic human rights, particularly in times of national security crises. In recent years, however, British human rights legislation has been criticised by conservatives for excessive attention to the human rights of offenders at the expense of those of victims; many high-profile cases, such as those of Learco Chindamo and the 2006 Afghan hijackers case, have attracted controversy, sparking rightwing calls for the review of the Human Rights Act 1998 and other legislation.
Read more about Human Rights In The United Kingdom: The UK Before The European Court of Human Rights, Human Trafficking, National Human Rights Institutions in The UK, Human Rights Non-governmental Organisations
Famous quotes containing the words human rights, human, rights, united and/or kingdom:
“Human life consists in mutual service. No grief, pain, misfortune, or “broken heart,” is excuse for cutting off one’s life while any power of service remains. But when all usefulness is over, when one is assured of an unavoidable and imminent death, it is the simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one.”
—Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935)
“A poem is like a person. Though it has a family tree, it is important not because of its ancestors but because of its individuality. The poem, like any human being, is something more than its most complete analysis. Like any human being, it gives a sense of unified individuality which no summary of its qualities can reproduce; and at the same time a sense of variety which is beyond satisfactory final analysis.”
—Donald Stauffer (b. 1930)
“In our governments the real power lies in the majority of the community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from the acts of government contrary to the sense of the constituents, but from the acts in which government is the mere instrument of the majority.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“Places where he might live and die and never hear of the United States, which make such a noise in the world,—never hear of America, so called from the name of a European gentleman.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
—Bible: New Testament, Matthew 18:3.