Kate
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katesheill.bsky.social
Kate
@katesheill.bsky.social
630 followers 720 following 180 posts
Human rights and migration, gender, sexuality. She/her. London / Bangkok.
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katesheill.bsky.social
Text extract: “By the summer of 2021, there were so many complaints about the Grand that it was removed from an approved list by the tourism body Visit England. National headlines circulated about “blood on the walls “. Shortly afterwards, Scarborough council said it was writing to Britannia about the state of its accommodation. The same summer, the hotel was procured to house Afghan refugees.”
September 13, 2025 at 5:58 PM
katesheill.bsky.social
Special procedures are human rights mechanisms - hence them being on the OHCHR website (along with the Human Rights Council etc) & OHCHR provide some support but they’re independent (& unpaid) actors www.ohchr.org/en/special-p...
Screenshot of the OHCHR web page on Special Procedures with text: “The special procedures of the Human Rights Council are independent human rights experts with mandates to report and advise on human rights from a thematic or country-specific perspective. They are unpaid and their tenure is limited to a maximum of six years. As of November 2024, there are 46 thematic and 14 country mandates.”
July 15, 2025 at 12:52 PM
katesheill.bsky.social
How HRC Member States voted
July 7, 2025 at 11:48 AM
katesheill.bsky.social
The Northern Irish Assembly's figures indicate that net migration from other countries to Northern Ireland in the past 22 years is around 62,000 people. Around 3% of Northern Ireland's population currently belong to any ethnic minority at all. Indeed, "unfettered immigration" seems a somewhat odd descriptor for the Mid and East Antrim council area, in which Ballymena is situated, which has seen a net total of fewer than 5,000 international migrants settle there, this century.
June 15, 2025 at 10:25 AM
katesheill.bsky.social
Good to see this clear statement on citizenship-stripping, vastly overused in the UK, as “fundamentally racist”
Screenshot from the Financial Times: “Nevertheless, both of us believe that British citizenship should confer the same inalienable rights on all those who hold it; on those of mixed heritage, on those whose ancestors were here before the Norman conquest and on those who took the oath of citizenship today. We reject, as fundamentally racist, the argument that those born British who hold dual citizenship can be deprived of their British passport while those with no foreign heritage cannot. In other words, we believe that once British, always and equally British.”
May 16, 2025 at 4:14 PM
katesheill.bsky.social
And there it is

The Trump administration’s new travel ban - a draft list with three tiers of countries whose citizens may face restrictions on entering the USA
www.nytimes.com/2025/03/14/u...
Draft list of proposed travel ban countries detailing three tiers An internal Trump administration proposal lists the following countries whose citizens could face restrictions on entering the U.S. Some countries may change in any final order: * all travel banned (Afghanistan; Bhutan; Cuba; Iran; Libya; North Korea; Somalia; Sudan; Syria; Venezuela; Yemen); * visas sharply restricted (Belarus; Eritrea; Haiti; Laos; Myanmar; Pakistan; Russia; Sierra Leone; South Sudan; Turkmenistan); * 60 days to address concerns (Angola; Antigua and Barbuda; Benin; Burkina Faso; Cambodia; Cameroon; Cape Verde; Chad; Republic of Congo; Democratic Republic of Congo; Dominica; Equatorial Guinea; Gambia; Liberia; Malawi; Mali; Mauritania; St. Kitts and Nevis; St. Lucia; São Tomé and Príncipe; Vanuatu; Zimbabwe)
March 15, 2025 at 3:48 AM
katesheill.bsky.social
Bingo
Bluesky user count hitting 20,000 users.
November 19, 2024 at 1:54 PM
katesheill.bsky.social
Great to see this from the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights
Protecting the human rights of sex workers - www.coe.int/hu/web/commi...
A section of the Commissioner’s commentary: “A human rights based approach also means that consensual sexual relations between adults for remuneration should not be criminalised. Criminalisation and the enforcement of punitive provisions against sex workers, clients or third parties has significantly reduced sex workers' access to rights and essential services and has led sex workers to live and work in a clandestine manner and in isolation, in fear of the justice system. Conversely, decriminalisation of consensual adult sex work has had positive effects on the safety of sex workers and on their access to social protection and health services, resulting in improved health outcomes. The UN working Group also noted that a decriminalised framework is most conducive to the protection of sex workers' rights to participate in public and political life.”
February 17, 2024 at 7:29 AM
katesheill.bsky.social
Solidarity twitter.com/frankmugisha...
Picture of tweet from Frank Mugisha: Tomorrow 28th November, the Constitutional court of Uganda. Final conferencing for all Petitions against the anti homosexuality act 2023. #repealAHA2023
November 27, 2023 at 7:58 PM
katesheill.bsky.social
Non-refoulement is a principle of customary international law (=universally binding) & means that a State can’t send someone (not just a refugee & whatever their status) to a country where they’re at risk of serious human rights violations-there or where they are transferred
Sunday Times op-ed headline- “Migration is being used to enfeeble us, so it’s clear what we have to do. The principle of non-refoulement at the heart of refugee treaties belongs to a distant past and must be axed”
November 20, 2023 at 2:50 PM