The United Nations has rejected a bid led by Stonewall to downgrade Britain’s equality watchdog to the status of equivalent bodies in Azerbaijan and Bahrain.The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) will retain its A-status despite allegations that it is failing to sufficiently protect trans rights.Campaign groups led by Stonewall, the equalities charity, and the Good Law Project, headed by the barrister Jolyon Maugham, had lobbied the UN-affiliated Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (Ganhri) to strip the EHRC of its top-tier ranking amid a review of all Ganhri-affiliated bodies, which is carried out every five years. The lower, B-status is held by the human rights watchdogs in countries including Azerbaijan, Bahrain and Venezuela.Whitehall sources accused the groups of trying to restore “policy capture” of the EHRC – claiming that the body had previously championed trans rights at the expense of women’s rights and that Stonewall wanted to force the watchdog to revert to that stance.
Source: UN rejects Stonewall’s bid to downgrade Britain’s equality watchdog