Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, if he will make a comparative assessment of the human rights protections afforded to British citizens visiting countries that (a) are and (b) are not parties to the European Convention on Human Rights.

Countries party to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) are legally bound to secure to everyone within their jurisdiction the rights and freedoms defined in Section 1 of the Convention. There is legal recourse to the European Court of Human Rights for all persons within the jurisdiction of a state party who believe their rights to have been violated by a state party whilst they were within the jurisdiction of that State, and they have exhausted their domestic remedies in that State. The Court’s judgments are binding on the state against which the case was brought, though in practice implementation differs from country to country.

The situation in countries which are not party to the ECHR will depend on the provisions of domestic law and the international legal obligations applicable to the state in question which will vary depending on the human rights provisions in treaties to which that country is a party.