IHRC has made an oral intervention at the Human Rights Council UN in Geneva on the extension of pre-trial detention from 28 days to 42 days.

Full text below.

Mr President I would like to take this opportunity to thank and congratulate the Council on the conclusions and the recommendations that have been forwarded. Indeed they reflect many of our own concerns. In particular we believe that secure society cannot be built on compromising on due process on human rights and civil rights. As recommended we are also deeply concerned with the ever increasing time of pre-charge and pre-trial detention. We have raised this issue at various times with the government of UK in a variety of consultations. We are especially concerned since tomorrow the bill is presented before the UK Parliament to increase pre-charge detention from 28 days to 42 days. The need for this has never been identified, and indeed Britain already has the longest pre- charge detention limit in a liberal democracy. We would like to once again urge the British government to refrain from this unnecessary damaging policy. We also would like to recommend reviewing the anti-terrorism law in the light of the highest human rights standards and indeed we are concerned with the implementation of anti terror laws which has resulted in racism and religious profiling which is evident in disproportional in the stop and search statistics.

Thank you,