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The UK Home Office has begun a ten-week public consultation into the use of facial recognition and biometrics technologies by the police, with the view to expanding the rollout of live facial recognition policing (currently limited to ten forces) across the entire UK. Among the Government’s proposals is the creation of a regulator overseeing police implementation of the technology; any new legislation arising from the consultation is unlikely to be in force for at least another two years. The Government has invested over £15 million into facial recognition policing since 2024. Its currently unregulated use has drawn sharp criticism from human rights and civil liberties groups, and in August the Equality and Human Rights Commission warned that its present implementation was disproportionate in its infringement of human rights. Liberty director Akiko Hart responded positively to this week’s announcement of a consultation, but stressed that the Government “must halt the rapid rollout” of facial recognition and ensure that rights-prioritising safeguards are in place. Big Brother Watch director Silkie Carlo called the “consultation necessary but long overdue”, adding that police facial recognition should be paused immediately, pending the consultation’s outcome. Strong tendencies towards racial discrimination in the use of the technology have raised particular concerns, as the Home Office conceded this week: whereas white people are only wrongly identified by the technology at a rate of 0.04%, this occurs at a rate of 5.5% for black people and 4% for Asian people. Earlier this year the Metropolitan Police declined to adopt live facial recognition at September’s far-right ‘Unite the Kingdom’ rally, despite deploying it weeks earlier at the Notting Hill Carnival.
The International Federation for Human Rights (Féderation Internationale pour les droits humains, FIDH) has published a report sharply critical of French, German, UK and US state and media responses to pro-Palestine movements between October 2023 and September 2025, in what it calls “a profound crisis”, “not only under authoritarian regimes, but also in liberal democracies that have long claimed to uphold human rights.” Co-signed by the Ligue des droits de l’Homme (France), the Center for Constitutional Rights (US) and the Committee on the Administration of Justice (Northern Ireland), the report compares “violations to the rights of freedom of opinion and expression” across the four jurisdictions, particularly through what it perceives as direct and indirect media censorship and “systematic bias in reporting”; “violations against activists, NGOs, and civil society”; “violations against academic freedom”; and restrictions to “freedoms of peaceful assembly and association” (with blanket bans on protests in France and Germany coming under particular criticism for failing to meet tests of necessity and proportionality). FIDH claims that diverse measures “directly violat[ing] international human rights obligations… have created a widespread chilling effect on freedom of expression and public debate” in the countries concerned, “further undermining democratic participation and the voices of minority groups.” Among the report’s recommendations directed at the UK are a review of public nuisance orders, and the creation of an independent body to oversee police practices during demonstrations, based on the model of the Police Ombudsman in Northern Ireland.
Michael O’Flaherty, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, has published two separate letters on human rights concerns in the UK: one regarding protest policing, the other the “situation of trans people”. The first letter, addressed to the Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, notes the “ever more prominent” policing of protests in the UK since the Commissioner’s visit in July. It urges a “comprehensive review of the current legislation on the policing of protests within the United Kingdom’s human rights obligations” (referring specifically to the Terrorism Act 2000, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, and the Public Order Act 2023). Further concerns are expressed about the prohibitions of assemblies “in the vicinity of a place of worship” and of the wearing of masks in the Crime and Policing Bill, currently before the House of Lords. In the second letter, addressed to the Chairs of the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the Women and Equalities Committee, O’Flaherty draws attention to the guidance provided by Strasbourg case law on the rights of trans people: “this is particularly important as the Supreme Court [in For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers [2025] UKSC 16] did not engage with these human rights issues.” Speaking of the fallout of the Supreme Court case, the Commissioner warns against “a tendency to see the human rights of different groups of people as a zero-sum game. This has contributed to narratives which build on prejudice against trans people and portray upholding their human rights as a de facto threat to the rights of others.”
In the courts
The Home Secretary has lost her appeal against the decision to grant one of the founders of Palestine Action permission for judicial review of the group’s proscription under the Terrorism Act. In R (Huda Ammori) v Secretary of State for Home Department [2025] EWCA Civ 1311, Lady Carr CJ held that the fact there was a route open for Palestine Action to seek “deproscription” through the Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission did not rule out a challenge to the original proscription by way of judicial review. “We consider that the fact that judicial review would be a more expeditious means of challenging the Order, given the public importance of issues raised, and, in particular, the fact that persons were facing convictions for acting in ways that were made criminal as a consequence of the Order, justified using judicial review” ([59]). The Court of Appeal also granted Ms Ammori permission to apply for two further grounds of review: that the Home Secretary failed to have regard to relevant considerations, and that she did not follow her published policy. These are in addition to the two grounds already permitted by the High Court on 30 July: that the Home Secretary’s Order was unlawful as a disproportionate interference with Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention (freedom of expression and assembly), and that the Home Secretary should have consulted Palestine Action before making the Order, and by failing to do so was in breach of natural justice and Article 6 of the Convention (right to fair trial). The judicial review hearing is due to commence at the High Court on 25 November.
The UK Government enforced its first deportations under its controversial “one-in-one-out” asylum-seeker agreement with France this week, despite an interim injunction on Wednesday temporarily blocking the removal of one Eritrean national. Home Office sources reported the deportation of asylum seekers of Indian, Iranian and Eritrean nationality under the scheme; one deportee’s challenge at the High Court on human rights grounds failed upon Mr Justice Sheldon’s finding that, as a fellow signatory of the European Convention, France would afford the applicant the same human rights protections as the UK. Earlier in the week, a 25-year-old Eritrean man had succeeded in being granted an interim injunction temporarily staying his removal to France, after it was argued that the applicant required more time to make representations on his claim to be a victim of modern slavery. The ruling had prompted the newly appointed Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood to accuse asylum seekers of making “vexatious, last-minute claims” that “make a mockery of this country’s generosity”, and to issue new guidance to the Home Office slavery assessment team. The UK-France Dangerous Journeys Agreement was presented to Parliament last month, and is set to run until June 2026. It provides for the forced return of individuals entering the UK illegally from France, in exchange for the same number of asylum seekers who do meet UK immigration rules. The first French arrivals under the ”exchange” are now due to enter the UK over the next week.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has written to the Home Secretary and the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, urging ‘proportionate policing and protection of protest rights’ in the ongoing controversy over the Government’s proscription of the direct-action group Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation. In her letter of 15 August, EHRC chairwoman Baroness Kishwer Falkner raised concerns over recent ‘reports of police engagement in forms of protest that are not linked to any proscribed organisation’, ‘heavy handed policing’, and ‘blanket approaches [which] risk creating a chilling effect, deterring citizens from exercising their fundamental rights to freedom of expression and assembly through fear of possible consequences.’ Baroness Falkner stressed that any ‘restrictions on the exercise of… fundamental freedoms’ imposed by the police must be subject to an ‘established’ three-stage proportionality test, and that ‘all police officers should receive clear and consistent guidance on their human rights obligations in relation to protest.’ On the same day as the EHRC’s intervention, it was reported that Greenpeace, Human Rights Watch, Global Witness and the Quakers had written to the Attorney General, urging him to suspend the prosecution of protestors detained under the Terrorist Act until the judicial review of the Government’s ban on Palestine Action (due to be heard in November). Over 700 protestors have been arrested under the Terrorist Act since its amendment last month.
Over 100 people have been arrested across the UK in the wake of the Government’s proscription of the direct-action group Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation, via its amendment of the Terrorism Act 2000 earlier this month. The arrests, which mostly took place this weekend in Bristol, Edinburgh, London, Manchester and Truro at demonstrations co-ordinated by Defend Our Juries, saw protestors who had called for a reversal of the ban on Palestine Action charged with the offence of supporting a terrorist organisation. At a separate event in Canterbury, another pro-Palestine demonstrator was filmed being threatened with arrest under the Terrorism Act by armed police, without having expressed any support for the proscribed group. Amnesty International have called the footage “very concerning… We have long criticised UK terrorism law for being excessively broad and vaguely worded and a threat to freedom of expression. This video documents one aspect of exactly the kind of thing we were warning about.” The following Monday, Palestine Action’s co-founder Huda Ammori renewed her legal challenge against the ban at the High Court. The group’s acts of terror include spray-painting aircraft and blockading traffic.
The EU’s diplomatic service has warned of “indications” that Israel’s activities in Gaza and the occupied West Bank are “in breach of [its] human rights obligations” to the Union under Article 2 of the EU-Israel Association Agreement. The report, due to be presented on 23 June to the foreign ministers of Member States by Kaja Kallas, High Representative of the EU’s Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, is based on “facts verified by and assessments made by independent international institutions”. It follows an audit pushed forward last month by 17 Member States, led by the Netherlands. The Agreement, which came into force in 2000, provides for free trade arrangements between the two parties, currently worth over 42 billion euros a year in goods, and a further c. 35 billion euros in services: the EU is Israel’s top commercial partner. Article 2 of the Agreement states that “Relations between the Parties, as well as the provisions of the Agreement itself, shall be based on respect for human rights and democratic principles, which guides their internal and international policy and constitutes an essential element of the Agreement.” Suspending the Agreement would require the unanimous consent of the EU’s 27 Member States.
The UK Office for Students (OfS) has issued new “free speech” guidelines to universities in England, effectively prohibiting blanket bans on student protests, and putting substantial brakes on the penalisation of students and staff exercising lawful speech. The guidelines anticipate and purport to give clarity to the provisions of delayed Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023, now revised and due to come into force this August. The OfS’s new “three step” approach requires universities to take “reasonably practical steps” to “secure free speech” which is “within the law” (= Steps 1 and 2): where this is not possible, it must run a proportionality assessment on any interferences to free speech, following Article 10(2) of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) (= Step 3). The National Union for Students has dismissed the guidance as “just more nonsense playing into the so-called ‘culture wars’”, with the new regulations failing to the prioritise “protecting and supporting marginalised students.”
In the courts
The Court of Appeal has held that an asylum applicant’s fears of being returned to a jurisdiction which was not a “safe third country” or “safe third State” only affected his rights to appeal if the application were deemed inadmissible: it was “immaterial” to the assessment of an application once admitted. In AAZA v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025] EWCA Civ 705, a Yemeni national appealed against the Upper Tribunal’s decision to uphold the Home Secretary’s refusal of his asylum application. The appellant, who had lived in China since the age of one but did not have Chinese nationality, claimed that there had been an error of law in the Tribunal’s allowing his appeal on humanitarian protection grounds with regard to Yemen, but not on humanitarian protection and human rights grounds with regard to China. The appellant argued that, since China was not listed as a “safe third country” under Schedule 3 of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004, the UK was in breach of its obligations under the 1951 Refugee Convention, and in contravention of his rights under ECHR Article 3 (prohibition of torture), following the provisions concerning return to a “safe third State” under Part 4A of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. Bean LJ held that these statutory provisions did not apply to the instant case: “whether a state is a “safe third State” within this new provision only affects rights of appeal”, something not disputed here. The applicant’s risk of ill-treatment if returned to China therefore had to be decided on the basis of evidence relating to his own circumstances. Bean LJ found that the First Tier Tribunal “gave entirely adequate reasons for finding that the test was not satisfied” by the evidence of AAZA, who had spent virtually his whole life in China before coming to the UK as a student: “there was no error of law.” However, the Court held that the appellant might still apply to have his application reconsidered by the Home Secretary, if he could submit fresh evidence that he was at a risk of refoulement from China to Yemen.
The Ministry of Justice’s plan to roll out the chemical castration of convicted sex offenders has met with academic criticism, legal warnings, and comparisons to controversial schemes in other jurisdictions. The programme, announced this week by justice secretary Shabana Mahmood, is set to be piloted in twenty prisons in England and Wales as one of a number of “radical” reforms proposed in former Lord Chancellor David Gauke’s Independent Sentencing Review. Professor David Grubin of Newcastle University joined other forensic psychiatry experts expressing scepticism of the measure, saying that, although it was likely to reduce reoffending rates significantly, its “mandatory element” was “very unethical and… most doctors I know would be resistant to it.” Similar ‘Anti-Libidinal Intervention’ (ALI) schemes have been been introduced on a voluntary basis in Denmark and Germany, and mandatorily in Poland and Moldova – in the latter case, lasting for barely one year, before the country’s constitutional court quashed the measure for what it ruled as its fundamental human rights infringements. ALI programmes elsewhere have seen widespread condemnation from human rights organisations, including Amnesty International and the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture, citing in particular their violation of European Convention Articles 3 (prohibition of degrading punishment), 8 and 12 (right to private life and to found a family). Marcus Johnstone of PCD Solicitors has said that the current proposals for ALIs in the UK would lead to challenges in the courts.
The University of Sussex has received a record fine of £585,000 from the UK Office for Students (OfS) for what it has called a “fail[ure] to uphold freedom of speech and academic freedom”. The fine follows an investigation into the circumstances behind the resignation of the philosopher Kathleen Stock, who left the University in 2019 after becoming the object of student protests for her “gender critical views”. The OfS’s investigation focussed primarily on the University’s ‘Trans and Non Binary Equality Policy Statement’, which it claims created a “chilling effect”, giving rise to “the potential for staff and students to self-censor and not speak about or express certain lawful views.” The OfS states that the University may not have complied with section 43 of the Education (No. 2) Act 1986 (duty relating to freedom of speech); Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) (the right to freedom of expression); Section 19 of the Equality Act 2010 (indirect discrimination); and the Public Sector Equality Duty.
Friedrich Merz, the presumed incoming chancellor of Germany, has declared that he will invite Benjamin Netanyahu to the country, despite the arrest warrant issued for the latter by the International Criminal Court (ICC). Merz, whose Christian Democratic Union won the largest share of votes in Germany’s general election on 23 February, announced shortly after his victory that he had already spoken with the Israeli Prime Minister, and pledged to find “ways and means” of arranging his visit to the state. The ICC issued its warrant in November last year, after its Pre-Trial Chamber found “reasonable grounds to believe” that Netanyahu and his then defence minister Yoav Gallant “bear criminal responsibility for… the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare, and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.” As a signatory of the Rome Statute, Germany is obliged under domestic and international law to detain ICC suspects facing arrest warrants should they enter its territory. A spokesperson for Netanyahu praised Germany’s “overt defiance of the scandalous International Criminal Court decision”.
The UN Human Rights Office has publicised further details of the rapidly deteriorating human rights situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Speaking in Geneva on 24 February, DRC Prime Minister Judith Suminwa Tuluka claimed that around 7,000 people had died since the renewal of the country’s internal conflict at the beginning of the year, with 3,000 killed in the eastern city of Goma alone. Around half a million people are understood to be without shelter after the destruction of almost 100 displacement camps, while over 40,000 refugees have entered neighbouring Burundi over the past month. The conflict centres around the 8,000-strong rebel militia M23, who are seeking to advance to the DRC capital of Kinshasa and seize power. The UN Human Rights Council last month adopted a resolution to establish a fact-finding mission into the ongoing conflict, “to investigate… the alleged violations and abuses of human rights and violations of international humanitarian law, including those affecting women and children, and which include sexual or gender-based violence committed against internally displaced persons or refugees, and of potential international crimes.” The Council has condemned Rwanda’s support for the rebels.
In the courts
The European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg has held Cyprus to have been in violation of Articles 3 and 8 of the European Convention (ECHR) for its handling of a rape complaint by a British national in 2019. X v Cyprus (application no. 40733/22) concerned a resident of Derbyshire who, then aged nineteen, had reported a gang-rape in Ayia Napa to the Cypriot police. Following ten days of intensive questioning – without access to a lawyer, psychologist, or welfare officer – the claimant retracted her statement, only to be prosecuted for public mischief, for which she was found guilty at first instance (she was later acquitted on appeal by Cyprus’ Supreme Court). In its judgment handed down on 27 February, the Strasbourg court held unanimously that the authorities’ treatment of the claimant “fell short of the State’s positive obligation to apply the relevant criminal provisions in practice through effective investigation and prosecution”, thus violating ECHR Articles 3 (prohibition of degrading treatment or punishment) and 8 (right to respect for private and family life). The court has ordered Cyprus to pay the applicant €25,000 in damages and costs. Its judgment did not address the alleged rape itself, which remains unprosecuted.
In the UK, the Upper Tribunal has overturned a decision by the Home Office to deport an NHS doctor it accused of having “supported an act of terrorism” on social media. In R (on the application of Elwan) v Secretary of State for Home Department, the Tribunal undertook judicial review of the Home Secretary’s decision in November 2023 to refuse an application for indefinite leave to remain, and cancel the existing leave to remain, of Dr Menatalla Elwan, an Egyptian national working in Liverpool. Dr Elwan had published three anti-Israeli posts on her Twitter/X account within hours of the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023. While the Home Secretary “was rationally entitled to reach the conclusion that the posts were likely to cause community tensions within the UK and foster hatred which might lead to inter-community violence” and were “capable of crossing the line into conduct which was not conducive to the public good”, the Tribunal considered the Home Office’s exercise of powers disproportionate, taking into account Dr Elwan’s ECHR rights under Articles 8 (respect for private and family life – she had lived outside Egypt for nine years) and 10 (freedom of expression). Judge Stephen Davies held that Dr Elwan’s claim for judicial review of her refused application for indefinite leave to remain failed, but the review of the cancellation of her temporary leave to remain was successful. The latter decision was quashed, with the Home Secretary instructed to consider Dr Elwan’s case afresh.
An appeal to Article 8 rights has meanwhile failed in the case of S v F and M [2025] EWHC 439 (Fam). In its judgment handed down on 27 February, the High Court dismissed the application of S – a fourteen-year-old UK national whose parents had sent him to a boarding school in Ghana against his will – to be returned to the jurisdiction of England and Wales. Mr Justice Hayden held that, while “the Family Court, in its domestic case law, has long emphasised the obligation to comply with both Article 12 [of the United Nations Convention of Rights of the Child: “the views of the child [must be] given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child”] and Article 8 [ECHR]”, the views of the parents, that S was at high risk of gang “grooming” in London, were of persuasive force. “The decision falls within what I regard as the generous ambit of parental decision making, in which the State has no dominion… I share their view of where their son’s best interests lie.”
The UK Government introduced its Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill to Parliament on 30 January. The Law Society welcomed the Bill’s repeal of the controversial Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024 – described by Society president Richard Atkinson as ‘one of the most damaging pieces of legislation in recent history’ – and certain provisions of the Illegal Migration Act 2023. However, a number of charities have expressed concern that the Bill’s proposed anti-people-smuggling measures – including the creation of what Home Secretary Yvette Cooper calls ‘counter-terror-style powers’ – will adversely affect legitimate asylum seekers. ‘We are very concerned that by creating new offences, many refugees themselves could also be prosecuted’, wrote the Refugee Council. ‘This would be a gross miscarriage of justice… The most effective way to break the smuggling gangs’ grip is to stop refugees from getting into the boats in the first place, which means giving them a legal way to apply for asylum in the UK.’
This week also saw the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill undergo the scrutiny of the Commons General Committee. Lord Sumption, former Justice of the Supreme Court, told the Committee that the Bill’s requirement that those applying for assisted dying would need the approval of a High Court judge as well as two doctors was ‘unnecessary and in some respects undesirable… It is not entirely clear what the judge is supposed to do … Is he there to ensure that the two doctors have done their job… or is he there to form his own view on these matters, completely independently of all those who have given certificates? If the latter, one is talking about quite a time-consuming process, involving a lot of additional evidence. It seems to me this is a protection which no other country, so far that I am aware of among those who have authorised assisted dying, have included.’ The Committee sits again on 11 February.
In international news
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is under investigation by her country’s prosecutors for releasing and repatriating Osama al-Masri, a Libyan warlord wanted by the International Criminal Court. The Court issued its arrest warrant for Al-Masri on 18 January, citing his alleged command over a network of prisons in Tripoli, and ‘crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder, torture, rape and sexual violence, allegedly committed in Libya from February 2015 onwards.’ Al-Masri was arrested by the Italian authorities at a football game in Turin only a day after the warrant’s issue, before his release on 21 January ‘without prior notice or consultation of the Court.’ Meloni’s Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi, who is now also under investigation, had told the Italian Senate that al-Masri’s deportation was ‘for urgent security reasons, with my expulsion order, in view of the danger posed by the subject.’ It has since been claimed that al-Masri was released on a technicality, following bureaucratic errors made in the course of the suspect’s arrest. These are said to have compelled the Italian court of appeal to refuse to validate his further detention. Al-Masri was then boarded onto a military plane and safely returned to Libya.
In the courts
The Court of Appeal has allowed an appeal brought by two freelance journalists, permitting the disclosure of the names of two family court judges behind historic care proceedings relating to the murdered schoolgirl Sara Sharif. In Louise Tickle & Anor v The BBC & Ors [2025] EWCA Civ 42, Sir Geoffrey Vos MR ruled that Mr Justice Williams had ‘no jurisdiction’ to make a Reporting Restrictions Order anonymising the judges in December last year – save a possible obligation to do so under section 6(1) of the Human Rights Act (HRA) 1998, had it been necessary to avoid an infringement of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR).
Sir Geoffrey found that there was ‘no evidential basis’ on which to believe that the threshold for the application of ECHR Articles 2 (right to life), 3 (freedom from torture and inhuman or degrading treatment) or 8 (respect for family and private life) was reached. ‘For the avoidance of doubt, I am not saying that judges are obliged to tolerate any form of abuse or threats… Nor am I saying that it would never be possible for section 6 of the HRA to allow, or even require, a court to consider… an anonymisation order in relation to judges. In my judgment, however, it is very hard to imagine how such a situation could occur.’ It would require: (1) ‘compelling evidence… as to the risks’; (2) the court to be ‘satisfied that those risks could not be adequately addressed by other security measures’; and (3) the court ‘to conclude that the risks were so grave that, exceptionally, they provided a justification for overriding the fundamental principle of open justice.’
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