Founded | 1976 |
---|---|
Founder | Eric Lubbock, 4th Baron Avebury |
Type | Educational charity |
Location | |
Coordinates | 51°29′58″N0°07′27″W / 51.499551°N 0.124066°W |
Method | advocacy |
Key people |
|
Website | appg-humanrights |
The APPG for Human Rights, alternatively known as the Parliamentary Human Rights Group (PHRG) is a group within the Parliament of the United Kingdom consisting of members from all political parties. Its role is to promote and facilitate human rights work by politicians who usually spend most of their time dealing with matters that affect their local constituency.
PHRG was founded in 1976 by Eric Lubbock, Lord Avebury, after he was encouraged to concentrate more on international human rights by Martin Ennals, the then director of Amnesty International. [1] Avebury was Chairman of PHRG until 1997 when Labour MP Ann Clwyd took over. Avebury remained Vice-Chair of PHRG along with Jeremy Corbyn MP until his death in 2016. [2]
The organisation was run from Clwyd's office with funding from the Barrow Cadbury Trust. [3] Until the 2024 election the APPG's chair was Fabian Hamilton. [4]
The organisation undertakes activities such as writing briefings for UK attendees at the Inter-Parliamentary Union and organising meetings in Parliamentary committee rooms on diverse thematic and country-related human rights situations. They have held meetings on subjects ranging from statelessness [5] to Dalit rights [6] and undertaken country visits to Pakistan to report on the situation of the Ahmadiyya community. [7]
The Human Rights Handbook (1979) stated listed situations which PHRG had advocated on in its first three years to include 'the abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union; human rights violations in Brazil, Argentina, Chile; human rights and the Press; Namibia; human rights and the UN...' [8]
In December 2015, Clwyd stated in an article for Amnesty International that the UK should remain committed to the international human rights framework. This came at a time in which there was a growing perception that the British government, especially after the narrow Conservative victory in the 2015 General Election, had de-prioritised human rights as part of the work of the Foreign Office. [9] Sir Simon McDonald, Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Office admitted to a Commons committee in 2015 that human rights work "was secondary also to the need to promote British companies abroad", according to The Independent. [10]
Following the election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader in 2015 and the death of Lord Avebury in 2016, new members such as SNP MP Margaret Ferrier joined the group. [11]
Ann Clwyd Roberts was a Welsh Labour politician who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Cynon Valley for 35 years, from 1984 until 2019. Although she had intended to stand down in 2015, she was re-elected in that year's general election and in 2017 before standing down in 2019. Clwyd is the longest-serving female MP for a Welsh constituency.
Sir Peter James Bottomley is a British Conservative Party politician who served as a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1975 until 2024, last representing Worthing West. First elected at a by-election in the former constituency of Woolwich West, he served as its MP until its abolition at the 1983 general election, and then for the Eltham constituency which replaced it, until 1997. He moved to his last constituency at the 1997 general election, which he lost to Labour's Beccy Cooper in the 2024 general election.
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Eric Reginald Lubbock, 4th Baron Avebury, was an English politician and human rights campaigner. He served as the Liberal Member of Parliament for Orpington from 1962 to 1970. He then served in the House of Lords, having inherited the title of Baron Avebury in 1971, until his death. In 1999, when most hereditary peers were removed from the House of Lords, he was elected by his fellow Liberal Democrats to remain. When he died, he was the longest serving Liberal Democrat peer.
Andrew Francis Slaughter is a British Labour Party politician who is currently serving as Member of Parliament (MP) for Hammersmith and Chiswick, and before that, Hammersmith and Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush, since 2005. Prior to his election to Parliament, he had served as Leader of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham Council.
An all-party parliamentary group (APPG) is a technical group in the Parliament of the United Kingdom that is composed of members of parliament from all political parties, but have no official status within Parliament.
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The Peru Support Group (PSG) was established in 1983 to raise awareness of human rights violations committed during Peru’s internal armed conflict. It is a UK-based advocacy organisation with a fee-paying membership of approximately 500 people. Lord Avebury has served as PSG president since 2002 and a number of British MPs including Ann Clwyd and Simon Hughes are sponsors. Other notable sponsors of the organisation included renowned British writers Harold Pinter and Graham Greene. The organisation today campaigns on a wide range of issues including: human rights, indigenous rights, democratic governance and sustainable development, particularly with reference to extractive industries.
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