Earlier this month Amnesty UK – a human rights charity – published, and then quickly withdrew, a report called ‘A growing threat: the anti-rights movement in the UK’. By the time this piece is published, the report may be re-issued, amended, or consigned to the dustbin.
The report highlights the work of a wide-range of groups – 30% of whom are charities in the UK – that it labels, as ‘anti-rights’, many of them Christian groups, including, strangely but worryingly, the Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales and The Catholic Herald.
This is not the first such report that Amnesty has published, but what was different this year, is that it calls on the UK Charity Commission to “review awarding of charitable status to organisations that advocate for the removal of human rights protections, target minority groups, or promote disinformation and harmful practices” and to “strengthen the criteria used to assess whether organisations meet the public benefit test required for charitable status”. This feels like an organisation pulling up the drawbridge after itself.
Report
Amnesty’s report has received a strong backlash from the groups that it ‘names and shames’, resulting in its decision to express ‘regret’ at its haste in publishing and to take time to review.
The decision by Amnesty to, what feels like, implicitly ‘refer’ to the Charity Commission, groups that have established Charitable status and consider themselves also to be fulfilling a ‘human rights’ charitable purpose, just as Amnesty does, does not sit well for pluralism within the charity and civil society space.
Amnesty highlighted, as part of what it claims is an extensive financial analysis of 37 ‘anti-rights’ groups, that these groups have, in totality, spent over £144m between 2019 and 2024. This sounds like a big figure – but in fact, it is less than an average of £1m per organisation per year. These are small organisations. Indeed, this year’s report states “Many of these organisations are too small to publish full accounts.” That makes them very, very small, yet Amnesty does not fail to label them as ‘anti-rights’.
By comparison, Amnesty UK’s total spend between 2020 and 2024 was over £110m – equivalent to all 37 ‘anti-rights’ organisations combined in the same period. Globally, Amnesty International’s gross income in 2023 was £370m. In one year. You cannot avoid the feeling that Amnesty is using its heft to punch down on organisations that it considers to be a threat to its own interpretation of human rights.
While the report has made little impact in media in Ireland, it arrives at a potentially critical time in Irish Charity Law”
Amnesty dwarfs all of these groups and it appears to be using both its financial clout and legacy moral authority to label smaller charities that it disagrees with as something nefarious rather than engaging in open debate with them. One instance where Amnesty UK challenged one of these groups was when they were on opposing sides of the landmark UK Supreme Court case where For Women Scotland successfully challenged the Scottish government over the definition of “woman” under the Equality Act. Amnesty was on the losing side.
While the report has made little impact in media in Ireland, it arrives at a potentially critical time in Irish Charity Law. The Charities (Amendment) Act 2024 expands on the definition of what a charity can be in Ireland by introducing a new charitable purpose – the advancement of human rights. This essentially aligns Ireland’s charity law with that of the UK who in 2006, introduced the advancement of human rights as a charitable purpose.
This change extends the Charities Act 2009 which set out the four types of charitable purposes as:
- Prevention or relief of poverty or economic hardship
- Advancement of education
- Advancement of religion
- Any other purpose that is of benefit to the community including, but not limited to, integration of the disadvantaged, promotion of health, environmental protection, animal welfare and the arts.
Intuitively, purposes such as ‘the relief of poverty’ and supporting ‘the disadvantaged’ are what people think of when they think of charities. Many are aware that education and religious bodies may be charities. Health and animal charities feel obvious too.
Rights
Fighting for human rights would fall under that intuitive thinking. But the problem is that human rights are a moveable feast. Who decides: what rights and whose rights? Is it the law? Human rights defenders are often fighting against existing laws and governments. Do established groups like Amnesty have a monopoly on human rights interpretation? Are they infallible?
Clearly, Amnesty UK’s interpretation of human rights clashes with that of the groups that it sought to doxx to the public and the Charity Commissioner. Advancing one interpretation of human rights often entails the diminution of another. Yet, boundaries are needed to avoid a reductio ad absurdum.
How can the Regulator enable pluralism which is essential for a healthy civil society? Human rights are ever being re-interpreted and expanded – certain rights for some, at the expense of others. These are very much ideological differences and unreconcilable so how can they co-exist as charities advancing human rights?
Right now in Ireland, the Charity Regulator is trying to figure out how it “might deal with applications from organisations applying for charitable status and charities who wish to add the advancement of human rights to their existing charitable purpose(s)” as a result of the changes to the Charities Act.
{{When Amnesty was established, it fought for unpopular positions and punched upwards”
It has established a Statutory Consultative Panel to examine this issue. The Executive Director for Amnesty International Ireland has Observer Status on the panel. The challenge for the panel will be to ensure that the ‘advancement of human rights’ as a charitable purpose remains a broad church that allows for pluralist perspectives and interpretations.
The risk is that traditional human rights organisations and charities with the loudest voices and most influence, will seek ‘canonical capture’ with a narrow, and self-referential definition of human rights. Within Irish charity, NGO and civil society space, there is a tendency towards groupthink.
In 2023, the UK Charities Commission stated, after established charity Mermaids sought to challenge the charitable status of the gay rights organisation LGB Alliance:
“All charities, ultimately, must deliver on their purposes for the public benefit. We understand both charities hold opposing views, but when engaging in public debate and campaigning, they should do so with respect and tolerance. Demonising and undermining those who think differently is not acceptable behaviour from any charity on our register.”
The question for Ireland is whether the advancement of human rights as a charitable purpose will allow for debate and difference. Will the co-existence of pro-life and pro-abortion charities (indeed it is hard for either group to accept the opposing views of such fundamental difference can be considered ‘charitable’) be enabled? Will gender critical groups and indeed Christian groups be given the space to advocate their position as charities defending human rights? Will advocates for women only spaces be allowed or will they be accused of hate? Will human rights groups with the established muscle (and funding) seek to close the shop to organisations that are late to the game?
When Amnesty was established, it fought for unpopular positions and punched upwards. Amnesty’s approach to organisations that are in many ways, its successors, feels like gatecrasher turned gatekeeper.
Iona
David Quinn, of the Iona Institute, itself a charity with a purpose to advance religion, comments on the issue raised by the withdrawn report:
“Amnesty International was an organisation built up fighting on behalf of prisoners of conscience – strong brand, good name, good reputation – but is now abusing that brand and good name. We have seen the likes of the Iona Institute sometimes smeared by so-called human rights organisations. Hopefully the public will eventually see through all this.”