{"id":406915,"date":"2026-02-04T06:29:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T06:29:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/406915\/"},"modified":"2026-02-04T06:29:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T06:29:10","slug":"uk-government-repeatedly-undermined-rights-in-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/406915\/","title":{"rendered":"UK Government Repeatedly Undermined Rights in 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

(London, February 4, 2026) \u2013 The Labour government in the UK<\/a>, during its first full year in authority has carried out punitive immigration policies that have emboldened the far right, an authoritarian crackdown on protest rights, and a failure to adequately address an ongoing and worsening cost of living crisis, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2026.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we witnessed in 2025 was a government backsliding on human rights at an alarming rate,\u201d said\u00a0Yasmine Ahmed<\/a>, UK director at Human Rights Watch. \u201cThis government promised the rule of law would be central to its administration, but from restrictions on protest at home to its foreign policy on Gaza, it feels like human rights are quickly put on the chopping block if it proves politically expedient.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the 529-page World Report 2026, its 36th edition, Human Rights Watch reviews human rights practices in more than 100 countries. In his\u00a0introductory essay<\/a>, Executive Director Philippe Bolopion writes that breaking the authoritarian wave sweeping the world is the challenge of a generation. With the human rights system under unprecedented threat from the Trump administration and other global powers, Bolopion calls on rights-respecting democracies and civil society to build a strategic alliance to defend fundamental freedoms.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Government\u2019s approach to immigration has played a key role in mainstreaming anti-migrant rhetoric that has been weaponized by the far right.\u00a0Repressive anti-protest laws and the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation undermined freedom of expression, assembly, and association.The government has failed to adequately address the cost-of-living crisis.The government failed to consistently center human rights in its foreign policy, including on Israel\/Palestine, where it took some steps to address Israel\u2019s atrocities, but continued to license military equipment that Israeli forces have used to carry out war crimes in Gaza.\u00a0The government failed to provide Chagossians with full reparations for UK crimes of forced displacement in the context of a purported decolonization process that transfers sovereignty over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The UK government should respect its domestic and international obligations to uphold human rights and repeal or amend legislation that poses a direct threat to the rights of people both at home and abroad.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think a lot of people are shocked by the authoritarian direction this government has taken,\u201d Ahmed said \u201cNot only is it cut-and-pasting some of the worst and most regressive policies of the previous administration, but in areas like protest rights it is going even further. Do Labour MPs want their legacy in government to be of a party that made Britain a less democratic, less free country? I very much doubt it, and I hope they change course in 2026.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(London, February 4, 2026) \u2013 The Labour government in the UK, during its first full year in authority…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":406916,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-406915","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=406915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406915\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/406916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}