Right to Work: Right to Welfare

The Right to Work: Right to Welfare (R2W) group have been active since the summer of 2012, when a group of experienced PPR activists began organising with people who were out of work and on benefits at the Social Security office in Corporation Street, Belfast. Against the backdrop of rising unemployment and the most radical re-shaping of our welfare system in its history, the work of the R2W group has received acclaim for its innovative approach to asserting rights in the time of austerity.

Commenting on the R2W group, Ms. Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona, United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights said, “The important work being done by the Right to Work: Right to Welfare Group in Belfast, Northern Ireland to hold the government accountable through the grassroots development and use of human rights indicators and benchmarks is crucial and should be praised as a promising practice to be followed.”

16 August 2019 - "A shadow penal system" - surveillance in the welfare state

The Social Security system is ‘A shadow penal system’ where human rights are increasingly absent.

Poster for Suspect Communities Event, Featuring image of security guard, with head replaced by a CCTV camera

Noon, Wednesday 7 August 2019, Glór Na Móna (4 Whiterock Close, BT12 7RG)

12l.n, 7 Lúnasa, Glór Na Móna (4 Clós na Carraige Báine)

PPR highlights obstacles to securing state accountability for social and economic rights to UN

29 March 2019

PPR responds to call for input from UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights regarding state accountabilty

We are Right to Work; Right to Welfare - a group of sick, disabled, and unemployed people campaigning for simple, but potentially life changing, changes in how public money is spent, jobs are created and social security is administered.

In October 2018 we launched our report ‘Conscious Cruelty: Social Security, the Economy and Human Rights’.

We have been outside social security offices and assessment centres for years – listening to people tell their stories – people who rely on tiny amounts of social security money to survive.

Guy Standing is en route to Belfast to promote ‘Basic Income’ as a human right

Register here for - Unlocking Human Rights with a Basic Income – 7pm 10^th December 2018 – Agapé Centre South Belfast

Equality Can't Wait and Housing for All campaigners meet with UN's Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty

Families impacted by welfare reform, homelessness and enforced destitution met with the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and Human Rights, Professor Philip Alston in Belfast on Saturday 10 November 2018 to share their experiences as well as their proposals for change.

In the wake of an excoriating report on Universal Credit by the National Audit Office, the pressure mounts on the Department for Communities to take action to ensure benefit claimants are afforded basic human rights protections within the social security decision making system.

The Andersonstown News carried an opinion piece by PPR's Development Worker on 12th May 2018. Click below to read the article.

Overwhelming support from district Councils for the People’s Proposal

Most of the Councils have passed motions calling for the implementation of the People’s Proposal by the Department for Communities. 7 out of the 11 Councils have passed motions calling on the Department to ‘introduce a simple but vital checklist for social security decision makers’.

PIP assessments are harming vulnerable people – they must be scrapped

Everybody knows that the PIP assessment process is causing enormous anxiety and distress to people. At its worst is affecting people’s physical and mental health to a point of despair which has driven people in some instances to take their own lives.