Current Work

Human Rights Indicators for York

How can we measure York’s journey to becoming a Human Rights City? We’ve worked with City of York Council, York CVS, North Yorkshire Police and the voluntary sector to develop indicators in five different areas:

• Non-discrimination and Equality
• Health and Social Care
• Housing
• Education
• Standards of Living

These areas were decided through a participatory process with residents and community groups.

We developed our first report with indicators to measure York’s progress towards dealing with these key human rights issues in December 2016.

Download: York Human Rights Indicator Baseline Report 2016

On 7th December 2017, we released our second report reporting on progress and challenges.

Download: York Human Rights 2nd Indicator Report 2017

We are currently working on the 2018 report; this is a special edition on the right to housing.

Opinionate!

Our schools project has gone from strength to strength. After a successful launch of oversubscribed termly workshops, we have been expanding our efforts.

We continue to work the Independent State School Partnership and University of York Volunteering to engage young people. Last year we added Peace Jam York and York Archives to the list of organisations we work with to reach and engage young people.

We get young people talking about human rights

and encourage them to take action at their schools and in their communities.

Disability Pride

Since the autumn of 2016, we have worked with York Independent Living Network, York Explore and other organisations to develop awareness of Disability History Month (November to December) and the UN International Day for People with Disabilities (3rd December).   UK Disability History Month (UKDHM) is an annual event, running since 2010, that works to create a platform for focus on the history of disabled peoples struggle for equality and human rights. This year’s theme looked at Disability and Art. See http://ukdhm.org/ for further details.  International Day of Disabled People is a day observed by the United Nations.  This started in 1992, by United Nations General Assembly resolution (47/3). Its aim is to promote an understanding of disability issues and mobilize support for the dignity, rights and well-being of disabled people. It also seeks to increase awareness of gains to be derived from the integration of disabled people in every aspect of political, social, economic and cultural life. This year’s theme was the ‘transformation towards sustainable and resilient society for all’.  For more details see: https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/international-day-of-persons-with-disabilities-3-december.html

In York last year (2017) among other activities, we ran a community event on Direct Payments and a weekend of events under the banner of Disability Pride attended by close to 200 people.

Planning for 2018 is now underway. If you would like to get involved, please send us an email.

Community Voices

A basic requirement of human rights is that people are involved in decisions affecting them, but too often groups and individuals are unable to participate in consultations about the future of the city or their communities.

The Community Voices project aims at engaging hard-to-reach members of the community, asking them what their priorities are, and what issues affect them. We do this in three ways: firstly, working with rough sleepers and users of homeless services; secondly, focussing on people living and/or working in one York ward; and finally through a quarterly meeting, open to all, which seeks to identify areas of concern that are common to a wide range of individuals and organisations.

The Community Voices project, sponsored by City of York Council, runs from April 2018 – March 2019.

Past Work

Hate Crime

Hate crime is severely under reported in York. We worked with partners at NYP and York Racial Equality Network to investigate why this is, and what can be done to improve hate crime reporting mechanisms.

Click here to read a report commissioned by York: Human Rights City, in collaboration with students at the Centre for Applied Human Rights. This was released following a workshop on hate crime in May 2015 which brought together community groups, police, businesses and Council.

Download: Hate Crime Report May 2015