Human Dignity Trust was denied charitable status on grounds that it did not meet public benefit requirement
A human rights organisation that supports gay and lesbian individuals in countries where homosexuality is outlawed has been denied charitable status on the grounds that it is not sufficiently of "public benefit".
Human Dignity Trust (HDT) is appealing against a decision by the Charity Commission to turn down its application. The ruling raises doubts about the ability of philanthropic organisations to launch legal challenges and reopens questions about what constitutes political action.
Campaigning charities such as Amnesty and Justice have said the decision reverses years of progress and imposes restrictions that will significantly narrow the scope of their work in the UK and abroad.
The London-based Human Dignity Trust was established in 2011. It supports legal action aimed at overturning laws in foreign states that criminalise homosexual conduct. Many countries banning such activity are Commonwealth states that retain onetime British penal statutes.
The trust has worked on high-profile cases in Jamaica, Cyprus and Belize that may yet force far-reaching changes in those countries' domestic legislation. One of its founding members, the barrister Jonathan Cooper, has been an adviser to the Foreign Office on human rights.
In rejecting the trust's application, the Charity Commission declared that HDT "is not established for exclusively charitable purposes for the public benefit" and did not "meet the public benefit requirement for a charity as its purpose is directed towards changing the law".
Announcing the decision in October, the commission's chairman, William Shawcross, said: "I sympathise with [HDT's] aims … and know that many people around the world will support their work to tackle discrimination. However … we cannot and must not make our decisions based on value judgments about the merits of an organisation's aims or activities."
One of the main objections was that "under charity law a purpose directed towards changing the law or changing decisions or policies of government or government authorities either in this country or in foreign jurisdictions is not charitable".
In another key passage, the commission said that "political purposes cannot be charitable purposes" because "changes to the law or government decisions, either in this country or abroad, cannot necessarily be seen as beneficial and therefore meeting the public benefit requirement".
Its reasoning was largely based on a landmark UK case from 1982, McGovern v Attorney General, which forced Amnesty International to reorganise its operations on the basis of separate charitable and non-charitable sections. Most third sector organisations believed that charity law had moved on significantly since then.
Andrea Coomber, director of the legal affairs charity Justice, said: "The commission's decision undermines the determination of parliament that the advancement of human rights must be a charitable purpose. If it stands, valuable work to uphold important legal standards designed to protect us all will be deemed to have no public benefit. This cannot be the case."
Tony Farnfield, director of corporate services for Amnesty International UK, said: "The problem here seems to be that the Charity Commission is legally bound to apply an overly narrow definition of what counts as advancing human rights.
"HDT's work to challenge the criminalisation of consensual activity is, by any sensible definition, a human rights matter and meets a commonsense test of the public benefit requirement. Parliament needs to issue fresh guidance to enable the Charity Commission to apply more practical rigour in cases such as this one."
Cooper, chief executive of HDT, said: "The outcome of [our challenge] could have serious repercussions for many UK charities that aim to protect vulnerable people by upholding human rights law.
"[We are] a not-for-profit human rights organisation that is concerned about the criminalisation of homosexual conduct, [which] violates a person's right to dignity, equality and privacy. In countries where it is still a crime to be gay, HDT provides legal expertise to local groups or individuals who are using the courts to protect themselves and their clients from the human rights abuses that flow from such criminalisation.
"If the Charity Commission's decision is upheld, we risk a dangerous precedent being set, the logical conclusion of which would limit the effectiveness and even threaten the charitable status of many organisations that use the courts to protect minority or oppressed groups."
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