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British Ambassador discusses human rights and diversity at the Beirut Arab University

Frances Guy at the Beirut Arab University

Upon the invitation of the Human Rights Centre at the Beirut Arab University (BAU) and in the presence of the BAU’s President Dr. Amor Jalal el Adawi, the Deans of the different faculties and many students, British Ambassador to Lebanon Frances Guy gave a speech on ’The Legal framework of Human Rights as a necessary protection for individual citizens and for diversity’ in which she said that ‘only written, implemented human rights legislation can protect individuals from abuse. I will take the case of the UK and try and demonstrate how even we who have no written constitution and who pride ourselves on a long tradition of respect for individual rights – how we have depended on a written framework and how that has evolved.  I will try and argue too that it is that written framework combined with a culture of tolerance that has allowed Britain to develop into a genuinely multi-cultural society today.

And in the presence of more than 200 university students in Jamal Abdel Nasr’s conference hall, Ambassador Guy in her speech said: ‘Today in the United Kingdom we are proud to have Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews and other faiths in addition to Christianity.  Muslims represent about 3% of the total British population, about 2 million people. There are now over 1,200 mosques in the UK and more than 110 Muslim schools.  Some of these are state schools.  There are different arguments about the value or otherwise of faith schools. Arguments which you in Lebanon are all too familiar with. My point is that Muslims in the UK have been able to use human rights legislation successfully to argue that if the state provides other faith schools, in this case, Church of England and Catholic schools, then the state should also provide Muslim schools where demand justified such a provision. This now happens.’

The speech was followed by a Q & A session which was moderated by Dr. Omar Houri, the Director of the Human Rights Centre at BAU. The questions were varied and covered many topics including human rights issues in Lebanon, the region and the UK. Role of the UK in the Middle East, British educational scholarships, aid program and funding for local NGOs and others.

At the start of her visit to the BAU, Ambassador Guy was interviewed by two Journalism graduates at the University’s new Media Centre. Their questions focused on and human rights implementation differences among different nations and people especially between the West and the East.

Ambassador's speech:

Thank you to the Beirut Arab University for hosting this event and thank you especially to the Human Rights Centre for suggesting it.  Thank you all for coming. 
Ladies and Gentlemen. My theme this afternoon is that only written, implemented human rights legislation can protect individuals from abuse.  I will take the case of the UK and try and demonstrate how even we who have no written constitution and who pride ourselves on a long tradition of respect for individual rights – how we have depended on a written framework and how that has evolved.  I will try and argue too that it is that written framework combined with a culture of tolerance that has allowed Britain to develop into a genuinely multi-cultural society today.   

I would like to start by saying that I am not going to suggest that any country in the world is living up to the universal standards on human rights as set out in the universal declaration of 1948 and subsequent UN conventions to which a vast majority of countries, including both the UK and Lebanon have signed up to. These standards are goals, targets set in the aftermath of the horrors of the Second World War, targets that we all must continue to strive to live up to.   Because there have been failures across the world does not mean that we should give up on the fight to ensure that all individuals wherever they are, have their basic rights protected.

The attempt to define in written form safeguards on human rights started a long time ago in the United Kingdom.  Some of you will have heard of the Magna Carta. The Magna Carta was a pact signed in 1215 i.e. nearly 800 years ago.  It was also known even then as the Charter of Freedoms. The Magna Carta attempted to draw up the limits of the powers of the King.  Most importantly it guaranteed that everyone (at that time every freeman ie not serf or slave) was entitled to trial by his peers, and it guaranteed that no-one could be held in custody without charge – the famous provision of habeas corpus upon which our justice still depends today.

From there, from that moment in Runnymede on the river Thames, where a group of nobles tried to put limits on the power of any one autocratic King to rule over them, from there stems our tradition of tolerance and rule of law.   Of course, there were kings after that date that did rule by very autocratic means and the Magna Carta did not set rules in stone forever.  But I think that is also my point; laws are sets of principles that need to evolve.

In more modern times, especially since the end of the Second World War we have witnessed the evolution of Human Rights Legislation.    The UK was one of the first signatories to the UN Convention on Social and Political Rights and we have been ardent advocates of other conventions ever since. Lebanon too is a signatory to many UN conventions on Human Rights. 

I would like to focus on three articles from the Convention on Social and Political Rights and see what they mean in practice.  I would remind you that Lebanon has signed up to this Convention without reservations and note in passing that regrettably Lebanon is very late in submitting any reports to the United Nations about the implementation of this Convention.  The last report submitted by Lebanon was in 1996.

The three articles I would like to consider are:  Articles 18, 19 and 20 

Article 18 states
1. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This right shall include freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice, and freedom, either individually or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching.
Article 19
2. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.
Article 20
2. Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.
I have paraphrased a little.  But these quotes are the essential elements of the articles in question.

All of these areas of freedom of religion and freedom of expression have been the subject of concentrated debate nationally and internationally. 
I would like to show how the system of laws has evolved in the UK and how this has influenced the multi-cultural nature of our society.

Freedom of religion in the UK was a long struggle.  In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries we went through alternate Protestant and Catholic kings (and queens), but neither were able to impose their particular view of the world on the other.  The rights enshrined in the Magna Carta helped ensure that any King or Queen could not exercise total power over the people and force them to change religion.  Elizabeth the First – a great Protestant queen, vowed that she would not open the windows onto a man's soul.  In other words she would not question him about his faith but she would take him on his merits.   Today in the UK these rights are enshrined in a Human Rights Act which was agreed in 1998 and which in turn ensures the primacy of the European Human Rights Convention agreed in 1950 over other aspects of English law.   That development in itself: the enshrinement of a Human Rights Act and the acknowledgement of international law as paramount was a very significant step forward in the evolution of English justice. 

Today in the United Kingdom we are proud to have Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews and other faiths in addition to Christianity.  Muslims represent about 3% of the total British population, about 2 million people.  There are now over 1,200 mosques in the UK and more than 110 Muslim schools.  Some of these are state schools.  There are different arguments about the value or otherwise of faith schools. Arguments which you in Lebanon are all too familiar with.  My point is that Muslims in the UK have been able to use human rights legislation successfully to argue that if the state provides other faith schools, in this case, Church of England and Catholic schools, then the state should also provide Muslim schools where demand justified such a provision.  This now happens. 
Let us look at Article 19 on Freedom of Expression.

After Habeas Corpus the right to freedom of expression is perhaps the most fundamental human right of all.  Without this right we would not be able to learn of abuses that take place. Without information no population would be able to agitate for change or progress.  Autocracy would be guaranteed longevity.  Democracy would cease to function.

More recently freedom of expression has also been linked to freedom of information; freedom of access to information.  Article 19 (www.article19.org)  is a British NGO which was set up in 1987 to monitor the implementation of the right to freedom of expression throughout the world, to advocate for its implementation and to offer training and support for other countries where helpful.  They have an interesting website which I would recommend you look at.   One of the features that draws your attention, is a map of the world moving through the 20years between 1987 and 2007 registering the progress of freedom of expression.   If you look at this map you will see that there was a big positive change in the early 1990s but after the turn of the 21st century there was a slight regression – mostly visible in Russia and some countries of Africa.  Nevertheless Article 19 concludes that there has been significant progress in ensuring freedom of expression over the last 20 years, especially in Europe and notably in the field of legislation.  In the eighties there had only been a handful of cases and judgements about freedom of expression in the European courts, 20 years later the number of cases runs into the hundreds.  This means that lawyers have a whole area of precedent and case law to draw on, helping to safeguard individual rights in the future. 

As I said an interesting subsection of the right to freedom of expression is the right to freedom of information.  In this area too there has been significant progress.  In 1987 only 13 countries in the world had legislation protecting the right to information. 20 years later that figure was 75.  The UK is one of those. The UK Freedom of Information Act was passed in 2000 and came into law in 2005.  It means that everyone has the right to request information held by a public authority and that once such a request has been made the public authority must respond within 20 days unless the request is subject to exemptions, or is too costly to provide.  Access to Freedom of Information has made an enormous difference to the workings of government. Overtime it should lead to more accountable government. A recent dramatic example is the MPs expenses scandal in the UK which was able to be exposed because parliament as a public authority had to reply to certain enquiries that were made. 

Of course, there are still many barriers to freedom of expression. There are three causes in particular where limits are often imposed: national security, defamation and regulation of the media.  Regulation of the media and the need to guarantee independence from government interference is arguably the most globally difficult.   In Europe there has been some progress on creating standards but limits on eg. Media ownership remain very vague. In Lebanon competition ensures greater potential freedom in this area than in many European countries.

The value of a legal framework in protecting rights and guaranteeing access to information has been shown in the UK on some of the issues surrounding British detainees who were held in Guantanamo and who are now seeking to demonstrate that in some cases at least, parts of the British security establishment were aware that they were being subject to inhumane treatment.  These cases are sub-judice so I am unable to comment further BUT the fact that the detainees are able to challenge sections of the British government's security establishment is a testament to the strength of the human rights legislation now present in British law.

How does all of this help ensure cultural diversity? I think that this is where Article 20 comes in, as it provides a guarantee against racial or religious incitement to hatred or violence.  Trevor Griffiths of the Equality Commission in the UK argues that British commonsense provides an approach to human rights that is deeply ingrained in our British history that tells us for example, that while free speech cannot be traded for cultural sensitivity, the right to offend does not imply an obligation to insult.
I agree that ordinary citizens understand that there are limits to how one exercise freedom to express your point of view but I think nevertheless that it takes a legal framework to ensure it – a framework that ensures that people demonstrating against the Israeli Embassy in London do not use abusive anti-Semitic language, and a framework that balances the right to publish with the protection of minorities. This is arguably the latest in the building blocks of legislation that the UK has put in place to guarantee the rights of the Social and Political Covenant.  The Law on Religious incitement was finally put on the statute books in October 2007 after more than 3 attempts by the government to enact similar legislation.  What were the problems?  Well some of them were based on the dichotomy – the tension, if you like – between the right to freedom of expression and a right against religious incitement. The trick is to ensure that the laws on incitement are specific enough not to be used to cut back general freedoms of expression.  

The House of Lords ensured this by introducing two amendments to the government's proposed legislation. Their amendments meant that someone can only be prosecuted under the new law if they can be shown to have intent to stir up religious hatred or violence.  I think that is fair. You will not be prosecuted for saying something offensive if there was no intent. That is uncomfortable for minorities perhaps but social pressure and the media will continue to have an important role in persuading individuals not to use certain terms.   There was a concern that the new law could be used inadvertently against comedians or worse could be used by extreme religious groups to take out actions against other religions.  Both of these problems have been avoided. The law can, however, be used to prevent extremists of all kinds using public platforms to incite hatred.

Trevor Griffiths argues that basic values and freedoms must apply to all in the widest possible sense.  For example, that while the equality of women and the protection of children can never be modified in any way by cultural tradition, where fundamental protections are not undermined, we have to be ready to accept that minorities of which we are not a part ourselves have the right to be different.  Having a legal framework guaranteeing rights, must guarantee the right to be different; the objective is not to impose uniformity.

For example in the UK we make a legal distinction between forced marriage -  which is illegal - and arranged marriage, which is perfectly legal.  Numbers of arranged marriages remain relatively low but they are now a legitimate part of British life. That is one example of what being at ease with our diversity means. 

So what does this legal framework mean for modern Britain?  London has traditionally been a place of refuge and tolerance; Marx after all wrote his classic work in the British Library. London was the favourite place of exile of anarchists and revolutionaries. More recently it has been seen as the home of Muslim opposition forces, even leading to the French coining the term Londonistan. This is a heritage that we are proud of, even if it makes us occasional enemies of other governments.   But I think I have demonstrated that the new legal framework in the UK, especially the enactment of the human rights act in 1998, the Freedom of Information act in 2005 and the act against religious incitement in 2007, helps ensure that our tradition of freedom and tolerance cannot be abused by minorities to stir up hatred and undermine the human rights of individuals.  Our tradition of tolerance is now enhanced by a comprehensive legal framework.

But perhaps the best testament of all to our modern cultural diversity is an understanding of what has happened to a notorious housing estate in London, scene of the brutal murder of a policeman in the 1980s. The Broadwater Estate was notorious in the 1980s.   Riots were a regular occurrence and the particular riot that led to the murder of PC Blakelock was in protest of the violent action of an earlier police raid which had led to the heart attack of a resident.  After that, nearly all the residents put in requests to be moved out.   This community, this estate of council provided houses has now been transformed into a community that has so few crimes that the special police unit set up to help after the riot has been closed because it can no longer be justified.  It is a community of residents which is 30% white, 30% African including Somalis and West Africans and another 20% from the Caribbean as well as more than 10% Turkish Kurds.   The transformation has been brought about at least in part by police implementing human rights standards equally to everyone.   But it is not just recent immigrants who have benefitted, perhaps the last word should be with one of the older residents of the  Broadwater estate who stayed there through the troubles: Mary Kemp, aged 82 who has lived on the estate since it opened told the BBC recently:  We are pure English and do you know what that means? It means being tolerant of people, regardless of colour or creed. It means embracing people who are different from you. That's why we stayed here. Or as Salma Yaqoob a member of Birmingham city council puts it: The true hallmark of a civilised society is support for the rights of others - not only when we like particular choices, but also when we don't agree with the choices that others may make.

We have needed to encode that spirit of tolerance in the law to ensure its universal application but it is that spirit of tolerance that underlines our approach to human rights and our embrace of a new multi-cultural Britain. 

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