Human Rights

The human rights clampdown on free speech

17 February 2022 6:50 pm

On Wednesday, in a decision that ought to get a good deal more attention than it will, our Supreme Court…

The crazy, corrupt world of the Beijing Olympics

12 February 2022 9:00 am

Gstaad OK sport fans, have you been enjoying the concentration camp Olympics? I’m sure the Uighurs in the Chinese gulag…

Have we reached peak human rights?

7 January 2022 2:30 am

After the Colston debacle, you might be forgiven for having missed the other legal story that broke this week. The…

The burden of being a Newcastle United fan

30 October 2021 9:00 am

The second thing I learned about football, after moving to London, is that you can never, ever switch your allegiance.…

How the ancients handled refugees

2 October 2021 9:00 am

Hardly a day goes by without headlines about immigrants, asylum-seekers and refugees. In the ancient world, movements of people were…

Is Ireland cosying up to China?

3 June 2021 8:30 pm

In 2019, the then-deputy prime minister of Ireland Simon Coveney spoke at the UN Human Rights Council, where he underlined Ireland’s…

Why does China think it can bully backbench MPs like me?

27 March 2021 3:06 am

Does the Chinese Communist Party understand how our parliamentary democracy works? The evidence from the last 24 hours suggests not.…

Meghan Markle and the trouble with human rights law

13 February 2021 3:28 am

Meghan Markle hailed her victory in a high court privacy case as a ‘comprehensive win’ over the Mail on Sunday’s…

What the West can do about China’s Uyghur labour camps

23 January 2021 9:00 am

Who profits from Uyghur labour camps?

The modern celebrity silk: Geoffrey Robertson ticks all the boxes

30 June 2018 9:00 am

What makes a barrister famous? At one time, many of the best advocates were also prominent politicians, whose day job…

Punks vs. Putin

9 September 2017 9:00 am

What makes for meaningful political protest? In regimes where ideology was taken seriously (such as the Soviet Union or America…

Why leaving the EU wouldn’t make Britain any more free

19 March 2016 9:00 am

‘Out’ campaigners picture leaving the EU as a liberation. It wouldn’t be

Rwanda is sliding into a new tragedy. And this time we’re funding it

9 January 2016 9:00 am

The ultimate ‘donor darling’ is becoming a dictatorship whose critics live in fear

Turning back refugee boats saves lives - as Australia found out

12 September 2015 9:00 am

Turning back boats saves lives

A licence to kill - the slippery slope of 'assisted dying'

29 August 2015 9:00 am

If you don’t think legalising ‘assisted dying’ is a slippery slope, you haven’t been paying attention

Driving test advice from 80 years ago

6 June 2015 9:00 am

First test The driving test celebrated its 80th anniversary. The first person to take the test, R.E.L. Beene of Kensington,…

Charles Moore’s Notes: people who love making new laws like to present them as human rights

30 May 2015 9:00 am

Amnesty International and others have placed a large newspaper advertisement telling Michael Gove ‘Don’t Scrap Our Human Rights’. The ad…

The dark comedy of the Senate torture report

21 February 2015 9:00 am

Like many journalists, I’m a bit of a know-it-all — when information is touted as ‘new’, especially in government reports,…

Deng Xiaoping: following in Mao’s footsteps

6 December 2014 9:00 am

Much has been written about Deng Xiao-ping (1904–1997), most recently by Ezra Vogel in Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of…

You’ll regret not having a Human Rights Act when Labour get back in

11 October 2014 9:00 am

I’ve been thinking about the Conservative party’s proposal for a Bill of Rights and am finding it difficult to make…

The biggest civil liberties outrage you've never heard of

23 August 2014 9:00 am

‘Bubble matches’ sound like something quaint. In fact,they’re an outrage against civil liberties

Before you talk about 'Lessons from Rwanda', read this

5 April 2014 9:00 am

Twenty years ago, I was a witness to the Rwandan genocide. Those who speak of lessons from it are deluded

Melissa Kite: I can no longer find knickers small enough to fit me

23 November 2013 9:00 am

It’s becoming impossible to find knickers in my size

Hugo Rifkind: What is Facebook? 

26 October 2013 9:00 am

I’d never noticed that there aren’t any tits on Facebook. The place always seems brimming with right tits to me.…

There's a global morality gap — and it's getting wider

26 October 2013 9:00 am

The world can now be divided between post- and pre-enlightened countries