Letter to the editor: The bedrock of international law
I am deeply disturbed by the view taken by the Conservative MP for Arundel and South Downs regarding the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights [ECHR] in his recent column [‘Political opinion with Andrew Griffith MP: We will have to withdraw from the ECHR’, WSCT, Nov 20 / 'Fundamental mistake', WSCT, Nov 27].
The moral and political bedrock of international law is the 1948 United Nations [UN] Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Although the ECHR is not a UN body, nor legally created by the UDHR, it is directly inspired by it. The 1950 ECHR enforces the 1959 European Court of Human Rights ECHR - an international treaty drafted by the Council of Europe specifically to turn the UN Declaration into binding, enforceable law. The UDHR provides the moral and philosophical foundation to the Convention — and the Court that upholds it — giving those universal rights real legal force across Europe. The UK is a signatory, and its principles are embedded in UK law via the Human Rights Act 1998. In short, the ECHR is grounded in the principles of the UDHR, the cornerstone of modern human rights protections. To discard it would be to undermine the very framework that safeguards our freedoms. We get rid of it at our peril. Richard W. Symonds MCIPD Ifield Street, Ifield Village Crawley, West Sussex