The British Humanist Association (BHA) has today called on the UK, Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Irish Governments to do more to guarantee the rights of non-religious people across a range of areas, from religious discrimination in school admissions and the curriculum, to ensuring secular public services, and equal provision of chaplaincy and non-religious pastoral support in hospitals and prisons. The call comes as the BHA has submitted evidence to the United Nations’ Human Rights Committee’s current review into the UK’s human rights record. Similar calls were also made in a joint submission from a coalition of civil society groups, coordinated by the British Institute of Human Rights (BIHR).
The BHA also highlighted a number of ethical issues of common concern to non-religious people, related to sex and relationships education, marriage laws, abortion laws and assisted dying. In its submission, the BHA raised the following issues:
- Religious discrimination in state school admissions
- Religious discrimination in state school employment
- Exclusion of non-religious worldviews from the state school curriculum
- Requirement for Christian collective worship in state schools
- Status of Personal, Social, Health, Economics Education and Sex and Relationships Education in state schools
- Religious discrimination in the provision of public services
- Religious discrimination in the recruitment of state chaplains/pastoral support
- Criminality of assisted dying
- Inconsistency of marriage laws across the UK
- Criminality of abortion in Northern Ireland
For its part, the joint civil society report highlighted the same issues regarding sex and relationships education, collective worship, school admissions and the composition of the RE curriculum, while also taking up further matters of common concern to humanists, such as the potential weakening of our human rights laws that might follow from Government plans to repeal the Human Rights Act.
BHA Campaigns Manager Richy Thompson commented, ‘For too long, the UK Government has ignored and marginalised the concerns of the non-religious across a range of topics, in many ways to a much greater extent than in other developed countries. We hope that our and civil society’s submissions today will mean that the UN will take up these issues and encourage the UK to change.’
The joint report’s recommendations
The joint civil society response says the following:
Sex and Relationships Education (SRE)
- Submissions from a range of civil society organisations, including Scotland, raise concerns about the content and voluntary status of SRE. This echoes conclusions by a UK Parliamentary report that ‘young people consistently report that the SRE they receive is inadequate’ and by the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education that SRE should cover sexual health.
Non-religious children
- All children in state schools are required to take part in collective worship (Christian in character); in England and Wales this is daily. There are concerns about the inadequacy of withdrawal rights, and that children with sufficient understanding are not able to withdraw themselves.
Recommendations
- The UK Government should:
- Provide adequate and compulsory Sex and Relationships Education to young people
- Ensure children are free to withdraw from religious observance
Non-religious people
- There are concerns about the ability of state-funded religious schools to lawfully discriminate against non-religious families by selecting pupils based on religion, and the impact of plans to lift the current 50% selection limit which generally applies to new English schools.
- In England, the Government has opposed the equal inclusion of non-religious worldviews in statutory school religious education, despite a High Court case last year showing this is required.
Recommendations
- The UK Government should:
- Ensure non-religious worldviews form part of the statutory school religious education curriculum
Notes
For further comment or information, please contact BHA Campaigns Manager Richy Thompson at richy@humanists.uk or on 020 7324 3072.
Read the BHA’s submission: https://humanists.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016-09-19-Final-BHA-submission-to-UN-UPR-on-UKs-human-rights.pdf
Read the BIHR-coordinated joint civil society submission: https://www.bihr.org.uk/HRCheckReport
Read more about the BHA’s campaigns work on human rights and equality: https://humanists.uk/campaigns/human-rights-and-equality/
The British Humanist Association is the national charity working on behalf of non-religious people who seek to live ethical and fulfilling lives on the basis of reason and humanity. It promotes a secular state and equal treatment in law and policy of everyone, regardless of religion or belief.
The BHA is a member of the BIHR.