Writing to your MP about the UN Global Rights Index
Dictators are given to abuse of Human Rights, so the UN’s Universal Index of Human Rights, if made more transparent, would hlp to reduce the progress of authoritarians in the world.
They Work for You website is very useful, but I back it up with a paper copy.
[name] MP
House of Commons
London SW1A 0AA
Dear …..
Dictators are involved in about half of the wars which deface our world today, and authoritarian regimes are expanding in recent times and democracy is in retreat. Clearly Government should be attempting to reverse this dangerous trend, and I would be grateful if you would ask the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office for a summary of what actions they are taking to oppose the development of authoritarian governments and promote democracy, and also ask the FCDO whether it will consider calling for the United Nations to present their Universal Human Rights Index (https://uhri.ohchr.org/en) in tabular form.
The Universal Human Rights Index is a vast database that is searchable, and produces a great amount of detail relating to the findings of the last review of each state, but its very size tends sometimes to get in the way of good understanding of the state under investigation. We cannot see the wood for the trees.
It is possible to render these assessments of the Human Rights (HR) status of a country into tabular form. This has been done by a couple of academic institutions, and there is a page on Our World In Data that exemplifies what the UN UHR Index could do. Using Varieties of Democracy data, if we go here https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/human-rights-index-vdem?tab=table&country=~OWID_WRL and click on Table, then 2025, we find that the best counties for HR are Estonia, the worst are are Eritrea, Afghanistan and North Korea, with all other measured countries ranged in between. Britain occupies a mediocre position 64 from the top, and shows a decline in HR performance since 2010.
If the UN present their data on human rights and democracy in this way, anyone can look at the table and see at a glance the relative position of each country on this scale. It is a powerful way of presenting information about the HR performance of a country.
It is very likely that many countries will complain that they are being misrepresented on the scale. The UN can respond to these complaints positively by sending its rapporteurs in to review conditions in the complaining State. The likelihood is that the state will respond by doing such things as liberating many political prisoners, so there will be a direct effect to the UHRI in tabular form. Overall, the Universal Human rights Index presented in this way will exert a steady, continuous upward pressure on HR performance across the world.
I would be very grateful if you would ask an FCDO Ministers for their opinion of this approach.
Thank you for your work
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A More Peaceful World 