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Schona Jolly KC Profile picture
Schona Jolly KC
Barrister @CloistersLaw (equality, humanrights, international, employment), Visiting Prof @GoldsmithsLaw, Ex BHRC Chair, Writer, Flâneuse, Opinions mine.
@littlegravitas@c.im 🇺🇦 🇪🇺 💙 #FBPE Profile picture Dame Chris🌟🇺🇦😷 #RejoinEU #FBPE #GTTO🔶️ Profile picture Jay Jernigan Profile picture M @csibike1@mastodonapp.uk 🐠💙FBPE GTTO 🇪🇺🇺🇦 Profile picture Jeffrey Rubinoff Profile picture 12 added to My Authors
Dec 18, 2022 • 13 tweets • 4 min read
Loving this @BBCSport footage from Rosario of the young Messi and his vida Argentina.

Love both these teams, and what a spectacle to come, but I’m a long time fan of the Argentina magic so… #VamosArgentina #ArgentinaVsFrance. Those anthems, these teams!

Here we go. #VamosArgentina
Dec 11, 2022 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
And just like that, #GlobalBritain becomes the next Brexit catchphrase to bite the dust. This news that the UK formally is to downgrade its longstanding commitment to human rights for close diplomatic ties is a real blow. Soft power has always mattered. theguardian.com/politics/2022/… Hoping for a strong and principled response from opposition parties on the govt’s reported foreign policy intention to drop the UK’s long-standing commitment to human rights for close diplomatic ties.

@DavidLammy @LaylaMoran @AlynSmith @CarolineLucas
Nov 23, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
#IndyRef2 UK Supreme Court ruling now with unanimous judgment: Court has decided it does have power to decide reference from Lord Advocate. Consistent with rule of law & public interest. Supreme Court does not uphold SNP arguments on the right to self-determination under international law. Finds it cannot meet the threshold of a colonised people or an oppressed people, following Canadian SC judgment on Quebec.
Oct 31, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
The speedy congratulations posted out by world leaders overnight is really testament to quite how frightening a Bolsonoro victory would have been, and they are a rare joy and optimism to behold, even with the hard work ahead for Brazil. Parabens @LulaOficial! Leading the way with genuine warmth and elegant optimism is, as ever, President Macron, reflecting that Lula’s win opens a new page of history in Brazil.
Oct 28, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
They are not EU laws but UK laws which we have because of our EU membership. The #REUL Bill will set fire to legal certainty & stability for individuals, business & growth. An arbitrary way to make law, allowing Ministers to replace or lose 2400+ laws, without Plmnt scrutiny. All sorts of critical regulations are affected, including employment rights, environmental protections, food standards, consumer rights, animal protection etc.

Replacing decades of carefully crafted regulations which protect us requires careful consultation & scrutiny by Plmnt.
Oct 20, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Hoping lawyers, civil society & MPs examine carefully the #RetainedEULawBill. It will hand sweeping power to the executive over critical areas of people’s lives like workers rights, environmental & consumer protections, with alarming implications for legal certainty & stability. If it feels like Groundhog Day, that’s because it is. But this is not an argument about Brexit.

We have left the EU. That doesn’t enable a free pass for any govt of the day to deregulate in an arbitrary way.

The risks of unintended consequences, at the very least, are high.
Jul 1, 2022 • 7 tweets • 4 min read
As Hong Kong marks 25 years since the handover from Britain, the rapid & undisguised transformation of Hong Kong just 2 years after the National Security Law was imposed sees the fears confirmed in this piece I wrote in 2020 for @prospect_uk. prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/why-h… This is an excellent deep dive into how Hong Kong has been transformed by China into a landscape where journalists, lawyers, elected democrats, unions & civil society operate in a climate of fear or are silenced by the State in a harsh crackdown on rights and freedoms.
Jun 23, 2022 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
Woke up early to read Raab’s Bill of Rights Bill, wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry when I started reading the dangerous tangle of incoherence, like some teenage anti-HRA wish list & then saw @ProfMarkElliott had written a blog. Read it. It’s brilliant.
publiclawforeveryone.com/2022/06/22/the… One point that really struck me when I read this Bill was on international law.

We don’t seem to have a government that understands its obligations in international law at the moment - see NI Protocol, Rwanda, WTO scandals just from last week.

And now this Bill of Rights Bill.
Jun 21, 2022 • 21 tweets • 11 min read
As the Bill of Rights is due to be published, a piece I wrote when the latest #HRA review was announced.

“The championing of parliamentary control sits uncomfortably alongside this government’s consistent attempts to bypass scrutiny and accountability…” prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/a-hum… A reminder that the govt effectively ignored the IHRAR, the previously commissioned independent review of the #HumanRightsAct, which made clear there was no proper basis for the narrative that judges are out of control, nor that groundless human rights claims are proliferating.
Jun 14, 2022 • 8 tweets • 4 min read
Tonight’s ECtHR intervention is a measure granted only exceptionally where there’s a “real risk of irreversible harm”.

That no removal should take place until 3 weeks after the final domestic decision is the common sense this govt so often mentions in the human rights context. On a day when the UK Prime Minister’s attacks on lawyers have led the leaders of the profession to issue a strong statement, where Johnson has unleashed at least a question mark over the ECHR itself, this is a confrontation his govt has brought on itself - perhaps foreseeably.
Jun 12, 2022 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
This powerful piece by @Lees_Martina reconstructs the horrifying tragedy of Grenfell & explains why, 5 years on, 640k people still live in flammable flats & up to 4.2million are trapped in #claddingscandal created by govt failures, corporate wrongdoing & regulatory incompetence. When you read the painful details of the multiple failures which led to tragedy of Grenfell, & when you have personally experienced the fallout as millions of us have, it’s been very hard to believe that we live in a country, properly regulated, that values people over profits.
Jun 7, 2022 • 10 tweets • 8 min read
British journalist Dom Philips remains missing in the Amazon following threats. Situation alarming.

@FCDOHumanRights @trussliz @ukinbrazil @mhopkinsfco must work with @jairbolsonaro govt to act urgently now.

Thanks to Brazil & @Everton striker Richarlison for lending his voice. Part of an important thread which shows why the highest level urgent intervention by the Brazilian authorities is needed. The terrain, the drug trafficking routes & illegal mining make this an operation fraught with danger & difficulty.

Dom Philips & Bruno Pereira need help now.
May 28, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Away from the lurid images, Johnson’s govt toys with vulnerable lives.

Home Office figures show 24% of asylum seekers making small boat crossings are Afghans.

A @CommonsForeign report this week fiercely criticised govt failures on Afghanistan.

This is how govt responds.#Rwanda Imagine having faced the unimaginable in Afghanistan last summer, as Britain failed its allies, making it here & being faced with this flimsy document. In English. No translation. Almost no legal help.

Reprehensible cruelty, to make a political point.

May 26, 2022 • 8 tweets • 4 min read
Reflecting on what “bearing responsibility” means for a Minister after Sue Gray report & @CommonsForeign on #Afghanistan.

Accountability in Government appears to hold less consequence than for a CEO, employee or worker, despite its consequence for people, policy & constitution. If the PM can ‘misrepresent’ at leisure (often using wild language as he did yesterday moments before & after professing contrition) & the Speaker does nothing to regulate that - other than a policing of very specific words - Parliament is quaint but not functioning in its role.
May 24, 2022 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
Absolutely damning report from @CommonsForeign on UK’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, fiercely critical of Raab & senior leaders “on holiday when Kabul fell mark[ing] a fundamental lack of seriousness, grip or leadership at a time of national emergency.”

committees.parliament.uk/publications/2… Some of the harshest findings I’ve seen directed at a Minister, reflecting what many of us working on this saw.

“…no clear line of command within the political leadership of the Govt as decisions were made on the basis of untraceable & unaccountable political interventions.”
May 14, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Wait. What? 155 points?
What is happening? #Eurovision

(Confess I haven’t heard the song…) Douze points! Merci beaucoup la France!

Haven’t watched this for about 20 years but how sweet is this love and mutual appreciation this year? #Eurovision
May 6, 2022 • 9 tweets • 5 min read
Waking up to news that the Tories are taking something of a battering in London.

But if Labour takes control of true blue Westminster, Tory since the borough was created in 1964, that’s really a result to cause a stir. It’s looking that way… Westminster #LocalElections
May 3, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
This is quite some leak from the US Supreme Court - on so many levels.

Hoping that this really does not reflect the final judgment on abortion rights in the US. Hope doesn’t feel quite enough these days as the forceful impact of these turbulent years becomes felt. #RoeVsWade The piece contains the full draft of the leaked opinion. I haven’t yet read it all but it contains some extraordinary and regressive material which will turn constitutional equality protections on their head in the US, & which will chart also a course beyond abortion rights.
Apr 25, 2022 • 4 tweets • 4 min read
#Turkey The charges & the trial of #OsmanKavala have been a farce, a naked attempt to silence a critic. Neither the ECtHRjudgment, the @coe sanction or the clear evidence of Kavala have brought him justice.

A devastating verdict, for Kavala, but also for Turkey’s justice system. My thoughts are with #OsmanKavala, his co-defendants and all of their families and loved ones as this awful verdict reaches them.

Beyond devastating for them, and so many around the world who hoped there may yet be a sliver of hope. #Turkey

Courtroom sketch: @murattbasol Image
Apr 21, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Seriously, why would a British Prime Minister visit & pose on a JCB bulldozer as India suffers a wave of appalling violence where the homes & businesses of Muslims are illegally demolished by bulldozers? The Supreme Court heard this today.

The optics, the messaging - dreadful. The grave reality on the ground in India is a marked erosion of human rights and the rule of law & the normalisation of hostility towards minority communities by means of deliberate laws and practices. Here the former @FT India correspondent gives an eg of that normalisation.
Apr 14, 2022 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
Just caught up with the full Rwanda announcement. Full of ill-thought through contradictions, no workable detail and so unethical, never mind very vulnerable to legal challenge, the latter may well be the point. Blame the foreigners, blame lawyers, blame the law, leave the ECHR… Incredibly depressing, if now predictable, to see the govt cynically treating law & lawyers upholding the law, (domestic & international) & the rights of vulnerable people, as fair political game, again.

A deliberate unravelling of confidence in those that hold them to account.