Britain’s equality watchdog could lose its right to participate at the UN human rights council as a result of complaints about its independence and record on transgender rights.
The Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (Ganhri), which accredits bodies based on internationally recognised standards, has launched a special review of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC).
The review could lead to the commission losing its A status, which gives it independent participation rights at the UN human rights council as well as the right to vote and hold governance positions in Ganrhi.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
An initial submission for the EHRC to be stripped of its A status was made by a coalition of 19 LGBT+ organisations led by Stonewall and supported by the Good Law Project in February last year, claiming politicisation of the regulator and a “determinedly anti-trans stance”.
Stonewall and others claim that the EHRC has failed to comply with these recommendations and so they have made another submission to Ganrhi, which has prompted the special review, as revealed by the regulator’s chair, Kishwer Falkner, in a column for the Telegraph.
Within months of receiving these recommendations, they were already demonstrating that they were falling short, which then prompted Stonewall and 30 LGBTQ+ and human rights organisations to provide evidence of their concerns once again to Ganhri.”
In April, the EHRC faced further criticism from trans rights campaigners for advice to the UK government on the protected characteristic of sex in the Equality Act 2010, in which it said transgender people could be legitimately excluded from single-sex services if the reasons were “justifiable and proportionate”.
“We have already written to the committee to highlight inaccuracies in the submissions made against us and to strongly reject claims that we are not compliant with the Paris principles.
Ganhri said the report from its September/October session, at which the EHRC said the decision was taken to launch a special review, would remain confidential until it was published online in the coming days.
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