The Human Rights Act in Social Enterprise

"Modifying the output of capitalism is the only method available to resolving the problem of capitalism where numbers trumped people – at the hands of people trained toward profit represented only by numbers and currencies rather than human beings.  Profit rules, people are expendable commodities represented by numbers.  The solution, and only solution, is to modify that output, measuring profit in terms of real human beings instead of numbers."

(From the Manifesto for People-Centered Economics 1996)

The newly elected British Government has decalred its intention to abolish the Human Rights Act which has been in effect since 2000.

Social enterprise became Uk govenment policy in 2002.

As a social enterprise establishing in the UK in 2004, we made a declation about humn rights in our business plan. These were based on the I Iinternational Bill of Human Rights. We were operating internationally:as a business putting human needs before shareholder return.    

” Fifty percent of annual surplus will remain in each local community where income is derived, by way of deposit into a local community development bank serving that location. In that locales are part of EU and therefore subject to well-developed rule of law, corruption issues should not present insurmountable barriers such as in Crimea.

"Along the way, all employees of P-CED are to be paid at minimum a wage sufficient to guarantee a decent standard of living in accordance with the International Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

"The fundamental policy guide for P-CED is the International Bill of Human Rights. IBHR is comprised of Universal Declaration of Human Rights; International Covenant of Civil and Politial Rights, and International Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. P-CED’s main focus falls within sphere the economic, social and cultural rights, ICESCR. In that the United States of America do not recognize those human rights and is the only industrialized country not to ratify ICESCR, P-CED operations are not yet compatible with underlying US policy and human rights commitments. In that sense, the US itself must be recommended as ‘not yet ready’, albeit for reasons quite dissimilar to those in Crimea. Thus the decision to first institute P-CED in Europe rather than the US. However, partnerships with US entities will be undertaken insofar as they advance the fulfilment of human rights where they are recognized across Europe under ICESCR. P-CED will also continue advocacy toward US ratification of ICESCR, and advocacy for economic rights in the US in particular. P-CED’s founder and first director is a member of the newly-formed US Human Rights Network.”

At some point the UK definition of social enterprise came to include a business investing 50% or more of surpus revenue for community benefit and having contacted the Department of Trade and Industry, I was able to confirm that the P-CED model qualified to describe us as a social enterprise.  

None of the definitions I've read of social enterprise have said anything about human rights. Presumably they didn't have to because it was already part of the law.

So what happens when that law is removed?

As our work took us on to Ukraine, our primary focus had becom a human rights issue. The commofification of children in institutions for profit and our justification to speak out on this issue was embedded in their written constitution with article making it incumbent on resiedent to act in defence of the vulnerable.

The mar largely regarded as the father of that constitution , lawyer and Rada member  Mikhailo Syrota, had himself taken as stand on this issue when he spoke in 2007:

“There’s a whore-house in Odesa where 3 to 6-year old kids are used as prostitutes. Officially, it is called the Zhemchuzhyna orphanage and in which 60 boys and girls live. They are regularly raped by adult clients. Who provides a cover for it? - The law-enforcement agencies. I have to do something about it. A have a 6-year old grandson, and when I think that my grandson can be one of them, I can kill the criminals with my bare hands. Now they tell me that vice is easier to be dealt with when my deputy immunity from prosecution is lifted. But a lawmaker must be protected against coercion and harassment from anyone, law-enforcement including,”

Within 6 months he died in a mysterious RTA, perhaps mistaken that hsi immunity from prosecution would protect his life.  

Following the publicity of our Death Camps for Children article and the publication of the 'Marshall Plan' in 2007, we'd written to USAID and the Senate Committee on Foreign relations calling for their support.  Our letter included this: 

"There is also the much more visible matter of kids in “regular” orphanages and kids living on the streets and in sewers. Orphanages have been another money-maker via selling “top” kids to foreign adoptions. Kids with lesser market value (over seven years old and/or serious health issues) were shunted to lesser quality, out-of-the-way orphanages. Kids with no market value were tossed aside completely, i.e., PN facilities a.k.a. Death Camps, for Children. President Yushchenko rightfully suspended foreign adoptions for a period of time because orphanages were normally operated more like livestock farms with product for sale. It’s mostly not the staff who are any sort of problem in these orphanages, although redundant independent evidence strongly indicates that sometimes arrangements have somehow been made for adults to come in and “play” with children of their choosing during the night. More often it comes down to even the best, most sincere staff having had their hands tied regarding what little they could do for the children assigned to them, because so much money was displaced as to leave comparative crumbs for caring for the kids. Once orphanage children reach the age of seventeen, they’re booted out into the world with hardly any preparation to deal with it. If kids are attractive enough, they can be (and are) taken into prostitution rings and rented out for sex work. If they got a bit of training at night in their orphanage, they are better prepared for sex work. (In Kharkiv, militia runs that operation. For Donetsk and Donbass, it’s Donetsk mafia. Variations on the same theme play out across Ukraine.) Street kids are street kids mainly because they consider living in orphanages until seventeen worse than living on the streets and sleeping in sewers. Of course they also have access to street drugs to take the edge off their miseries. That coupled with unprotected sex and inevitable prostitution produces an HIV/AIDS factory. In Ukraine at this moment, HIV is a pandemic and getting worse."

I'd even petitioned David Cameron for support.

it was the case of Jimmy Savile which brough home to us how those with the right connections and influence have been able to violate the vulnerable. More recently that of a member of the House of Lords, the lawmakers.

For those who speak out about injustice human rights law is perhaps the only armour  How can it be injustice when no justice opposes it?

 Where will we be having cut down the law, to disempower political opposition?