The Weekly Round Up: Cranston Inquiry, Navalnyy v Russia, advocate immunity in the Supreme Court, and Human Rights Watch’s World Report 2026
10 February 2026
09 February 2026 by Harry Camp
In the News
‘In peril’: Human Rights Watch publishes their World Report 2026
On Wednesday, Human Rights Watch published World Report 2026, the 36th edition of its annual review of human rights practices in over 100 countries.
Introducing the Report, Executive Director Philippe Bolopion describes 2025 as a potential ‘tipping point’: US hostility to multilateral institutions, he argues, now compounds longstanding efforts by China and Russia to erode the rules-based international order.
The Report’s UK chapter highlights restrictions on protest, including the proscription of Palestine Action, alongside rising absolute poverty, disability benefit cuts and far-right anti-migrant mobilisation. It criticised the Supreme Court’s ruling that ‘sex’ in the Equality Act 2010 refers to biological sex rather than legal gender identity (For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers [2025] UKSC 16). The same ruling forms part of a report by the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, discussed further below.
The World Report also welcomed Parliament’s vote to decriminalise abortion. Although the Abortion Act 1967 permitted lawful terminations in specified circumstances, abortion itself remained a criminal offence. In June 2025, the House of Commons voted 379 to 137 to add Clause 191 to the Crime and Policing Bill, removing women from criminal liability in relation to their own pregnancies at any gestational stage. The provision, which represents the most significant reform of abortion law in England and Wales in nearly 60 years, is currently before the House of Lords.
Human Rights Watch’s full global report can be accessed here.
UN Human Rights Chief Türk launches $400 million appeal and Global Alliance for Human Rights
This week, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk launched his Office’s annual funding appeal in Geneva, seeking US $400 million in voluntary contributions (5th February).
The appeal follows a challenging year: in 2025, the Office faced a combined funding shortfall of $65 million, forcing it to reduce its presence in several countries and postpone key oversight work. Türk has warned that the global human rights system is ‘hanging by a thread.’
Türk has also announced plans to convene a Global Alliance for Human Rights, a cross-regional coalition of states, businesses, civil society and philanthropists aimed at restoring human rights to the centre of public and political life. Human rights, Türk noted, remain a small fraction of overall UN spending.
The full UN Human Rights 2026 Annual Appeal report can be accessed here.
Cranston Inquiry finds Channel crossing deaths were avoidable
On Thursday, the Cranston Inquiry published its final report into the deaths of over 30 men, women and children who attempted to cross the English Channel by small boat on 23-24 November 2021.
Sir Ross Cranston, in his Closing Statement, found the loss of life was avoidable, concluding that chronic staff shortages at HM Coastguard in Dover and systemic failures in the UK’s search and rescue response contributed directly to the failure to rescue those in the water.
The Inquiry identified 27 of the dead by name, with four still missing, and made 18 recommendations to strengthen maritime search and rescue.
The final Cranston Inquiry Report can be accessed here.
UN Special Rapporteur criticises UK failure to enforce Supreme Court ruling on the meaning of sex in the Equality Act
On Thursday, Reem Alsalem, UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, expressed serious concern over the UK’s failure to implement the Supreme Court’s ruling in For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers [2025] UKSC 16, which held that ‘sex’ in the Equality Act 2010 means biological sex.
In her report following an official visit to the UK in 2024, Alsalem noted that – nearly a year on – the judgment has not been translated into binding guidance, with widespread non-compliance across the NHS, prisons and schools.
Public bodies reportedly continue applying the outdated 2011 EHRC Code of Practice, while awaiting Parliamentary approval of a revised Code.
In the Courts
ECtHR finds Russia violated Navalnyy’s right to life, liberty and freedom from ill-treatment
On Tuesday, the European Court of Human Rights unanimously found violations of Articles 2, 3 and 5(1) ECHR regarding the arrest, detention and treatment of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalnyy after his return to Russia in January 2021, five months after his near-fatal Novichok poisoning. The case is Navalnyy v. Russia (No. 4), nos. 4743/21 and 37083/21, 03 February 2026.
Navalnyy’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, continued the applications after his death in custody on 16 February 2024. Navalnyy had been imprisoned upon activation of a 2014 suspended sentence.
Russia was expelled from the Council of Europe on 16 March 2022 following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and ceased to be a party to the ECHR on 16 September 2022. The ECtHR nevertheless retains jurisdiction over applications concerning acts or omissions that occurred before that date, including the events giving rise to this judgment, regardless of Russia’s non-membership status.
On Article 5(1), the ECtHR held that both periods of detention were unlawful. Pre-activation detention (17 January to 2 February 2021) rested on unprecedented application of procedural provisions ‘by analogy’ that fell short of the Convention standard of foreseeability. Post-activation detention was unlawful principally because the underlying conviction had been found to rest on unforeseeable construction of criminal law (Article 7), a conclusion reinforced by findings that the original proceedings had amounted to a flagrant denial of justice (Article 6).
On Article 2, the Court addressed a novel claim: that where the threat to life originates from the State, detention heightens rather than mitigates risk. The Court held that the authorities knew or ought to have known of the real and immediate risk to Navalnyy’s life, yet dismissed the substantiated complaints without any risk assessment.
On Article 3, arbitrary sleep deprivation over 39 days, acute spinal pain and unjustified forced head-shaving cumulatively amounted to inhuman and degrading treatment of a particularly vulnerable detainee.
The Court left open what Article 2 requires by way of preventive measures where the State itself is the source of the threat to life, but made clear that a complete failure to assess such a risk is incompatible with the Convention.
Supreme Court grants permission to appeal on scope of advocate immunity and disclosure of a domestic abuse victim’s confidential address
On Monday, the Supreme Court granted permission to appeal in part in the case of The Chief Constable of Sussex Police v XGY [UKSC/2025/0194].
XGY, a domestic abuse victim, repeatedly fled her violent ex-partner, each time giving her new address to police subject to assurances of confidentiality. Despite this, the police included her address in a file for the CPS, and a CPS advocate read it out during a bail hearing, revealing her location to her abuser. She was forced to flee again into homelessness. The Court of Appeal struck out her claims under the HRA 1998 (Articles 2, 3 and 8) and Data Protection Act 2018 on the basis of advocate immunity.
The Supreme Court will now consider two issues: first, whether advocate immunity attaches to the CPS advocate’s disclosure of a vulnerable person’s confidential address at a bail hearing; second, whether advocate immunity extends to the police, who included the address in the file. Permission was refused on whether immunity bars HRA and DPA claims in principle, and on the separate summary disposal of the HRA claims. Narrowing the immunity would at least revive the DPA claims, with significant implications for state accountability to abuse victims.
Extradition of sole carer for partner with MS upheld as High Court applies Andrysiewicz
On Tuesday, the High Court dismissed an extradition appeal, applying the exceptional severity threshold reaffirmed by the Supreme Court in Andrysiewicz v Poland [2025] UKSC 23. The Court held that the impact on the appellant’s seriously ill partner, though ‘considerable and harmful,’ did not outweigh the public interest in returning a fugitive offender under Article 8. The case is Hodurek v Polish Judicial Authority [2026] EWHC 180 (Admin).
The appellant, a Polish national with settled status, was sentenced to two and a half years’ imprisonment for persistent theft offences between 2001 and 2005. He deliberately fled Poland in 2006 to evade his sentence, and his fugitive status pervaded the proportionality analysis. Following Polish Judicial Authorities v Celinski & Ors [2015] EWHC 1274 (Admin), very strong counter-balancing factors were required, and his private life in the UK had ‘always been tenuous.’ Fresh evidence on appeal showed marked deterioration in the condition of the appellant’s partner, Ms Kepka, who suffers from progressive MS and depends on him for daily assistance as her sole carer.
Mould J accepted extradition would cause Ms Kepka considerable hardship. However, the impact was not exceptionally severe: she retained NHS treatment, had been awarded personal independence payments, and could obtain support from social services and specialist MS charities. The twenty-year delay was largely of the appellant’s own making, and accordingly carried little weight.
Hodurek demonstrates how high the Andrysiewicz threshold sits: established sole caring responsibilities for a partner with a progressive condition were insufficient. The court accepted that NHS and charitable support could adequately replace the appellant’s daily care, despite no alternative arrangements having been made.
Gender discrimination in British nationality law: High Court finds no extra-territorial ECHR jurisdiction for overseas BOC claimant
On Wednesday, the High Court dismissed a challenge to the refusal to register the claimant as a British Overseas Citizen (‘BOC’), finding no ECHR jurisdiction. The case is R (Al Hashimi) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2026] EWHC 197 (Admin).
The claimant, a Somali national in the UAE, sought BOC status by descent from her mother, born in the British Colony of Aden. Under the British Nationality Act 1948, citizenship passed only through the father. Parliament has since remedied this for British Citizens and British Overseas Territories Citizens, but not BOCs, leaving a gap the claimant argued amounted to sex discrimination under Article 14 read with Article 8 ECHR.
Lang J granted an extension of time, accepting that delay resulted from difficulties obtaining specialist legal aid. The discrimination claim was arguable but failed at the jurisdictional threshold: the claimant had always lived outside the UK, had no private or family life there, and the decision’s effects were entirely extra-territorial. No authority supported extending jurisdiction because the decision was made by a UK minister under UK law. A separate attempt to use the proceedings as a springboard for a future claim under CEDAW was refused, the convention not forming part of domestic law.
The case leaves overseas BOC claimants in a challenging position: the domestic ECHR route may be blocked by jurisdiction, yet the government expects claimants to exhaust domestic remedies before turning to CEDAW.
