Safe Schools Alliance was dismayed to discover that it has been named in Amnesty International’s recent briefing and wrongly characterised as a “gender-critical” organisation.
We are not a gender campaign group. We are a child safeguarding organisation.
Our work is focused on promoting evidence-based safeguarding in schools and ensuring that the rights and welfare of children remain at the centre of policy and practice. To describe that work as “anti-rights” is both inaccurate and deeply concerning.
If Amnesty International now believes that standing up for child safeguarding is somehow incompatible with human rights, then it has serious questions to answer about exactly which rights it believes it is defending.
We are aware that many people object to effective safeguarding and that those who raise safeguarding concerns are increasingly met with labels, misrepresentation and attempts to silence debate rather than engagement with the evidence. Sadly, this appears to be another example.
We are also concerned that Amnesty has grouped Safe Schools Alliance together with a number of organisations with which we have no affiliation. Some of those organisations were entirely unknown to us before publication of the briefing. Others campaign on issues such as women’s rights, lesbian and gay rights or freedom of expression. They are independent organisations with their own aims and governance, and it is misleading to present them as a single coordinated movement.
The publication demonstrates a troubling lack of research, insight and objectivity. Organisations should be represented accurately, particularly by one that presents itself as a defender of human rights.
We understand that a number of organisations named in the briefing are considering legal action. We hope Amnesty International reflects carefully on the consequences of publishing material that misrepresents the organisations it seeks to criticise.
This episode also strengthens our long-standing call for a public inquiry into safeguarding.
When a child safeguarding organisation can be publicly misrepresented simply for advocating evidence-based safeguarding, it raises profound questions about the current state of safeguarding policy and public discourse.
There are widespread systemic failures in safeguarding, and public and professional understanding of what effective safeguarding actually requires has become increasingly confused.
The most fundamental human right any child possesses is the right to be protected by the adults and institutions responsible for their care. Safe Schools Alliance will continue to defend that principle, regardless of attempts to misrepresent or discredit our work.
Couldn’t agree more – we have entered an era which is eradicating all evidence based risk assessment for children; the recent comment by Cass on the example of ‘Joe’, lied to about his sex since the age of two and now, in her mind, requiring puberty blockade, sums up the appalling situation we face. Emminent authority figures have untethered themselves from rational thought in order to pledge allegiance to the bizarre social contagion of sex denialism. Children are paying an unbelievably high price for a lanyard class inspired, mass formation psychosis. And agencies like Amnesty are determined to destroy the lives of all and any organisations and adults raising objections. Jaw dropping.