A women’s support centre for sexual assault victims founded by JK Rowling has been described as an “anti-rights” organisation by Amnesty International UK.

Beira’s Place, which opened in Edinburgh in 2022, was established by the Harry Potter author to provide support for women who have experienced sexual violence. The service describes itself as offering trauma-informed care to women, including any women who identify as trans.

The group appears in Amnesty International UK’s latest report, A Growing Threat – the Anti-Rights Movement in the UK, which identifies organisations the charity categorises as part of the UK’s “gender critical” movement.

Amnesty said the groups included in the report “visibly oppose the rights” of LGBT people and argued that restrictions on the rights of one group can weaken protections for others.

The report was updated this month. The document now includes 51 gender-critical organisations among a list of 117 groups and movements that Amnesty said were working against established human-rights protections.

Also included in Amnesty’s report is For Women Scotland (FWS), the campaign organisation that has successfully challenged the Scottish government in a series of legal cases over the definition of “woman” in law and the participation of transgender women in female-only spaces.

The group secured a landmark victory in the UK Supreme Court last year, which ruled that the terms “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 refer to biological sex. The judgment has prompted governments and public bodies across the UK to review policies affecting single-sex spaces and services.

Beira’s Place was founded after controversy surrounding Rape Crisis Scotland’s Edinburgh centre, where the former chief executive Mridul Wadhwa faced criticism after suggesting survivors who objected to receiving support from a transgender woman should “reframe” their trauma. Rowling said at the time that the new service would ensure women could access support from female staff in a women-only environment.

Amnesty argued last year’s Supreme Court ruling had contributed to what it described as a deterioration in LGBT rights in the UK. The charity said that from 2015 to this year, Britain had fallen from first to 22nd place in the annual rankings compiled by the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA-Europe).

According to the report, the decline is linked to several factors, including the lack of reform to gender recognition laws, the absence of legislation banning conversion practices, the treatment of LGBT asylum seekers, and the consequences of the Supreme Court judgment in the FWS case.

The report states: “Human rights are interconnected and mutually reinforcing. When the rights of one group are restricted, protections for others can also be weakened, even where the effects are not immediately visible.”

It continues: “Anti-rights actors seek a society in which women and men have fixed and distinct roles, based on what they view as ‘natural’ and ‘traditional’. These actors perceive the idea that gender is socially constructed as a threat because it suggests that gender roles can, and do, change across societies and over time.”

Another Scottish organisation, Murray Blackburn Mackenzie, is also identified in the report.

A FWS spokesperson said: “For Women Scotland is only ‘anti-rights’ if you don’t consider women to be entitled to any rights in law or public life. It’s a sad state of affairs that Amnesty has sunk so low as to defame prominent women’s organisations, including a rape crisis centre and support networks for abused wives and children.

“We won a landmark case on women’s rights at the Supreme Court where Amnesty intervened with their best legal arguments against us. That the judges were unpersuaded should have given Amnesty pause for thought. Instead, they have chosen to launch an ill-advised attack, and one that surely risks attracting the attention of the Charity Commission.”

FWS has recently succeeded in separate legal action over the placement of transgender prisoners in Scotland’s female prison estate. 

After that ruling, the Scottish government confirmed it would not appeal and the Scottish Prison Service removed transgender women from the women’s prison estate while reviewing its policies.

Amnesty said its report is intended to document organisations and movements that it believes are seeking to roll back established human rights protections, particularly those affecting LGBT people and women.

MERCKLEIN, Georg Abraham Neu ausgefertigtes historisch-medicinisches Thier-Buch in vier besonderen

Nuremberg, Johan Friedrich Rüdiger, 1714. 8vo. Contemporary vellum. Double-page engraved allegorical frontispiece engraved by Johan Lorentz Hönnig (Nurenberg), title printed in red and black on two facing pages, 95 full-page engraved plates each depicting two, three or more animals. [26], 732, [72] pp.

Sanguine : Hufflepuff

Melancholic : Ravenclaw

Choleric : Gryffindor

Phlegmatic : Slytherin

I feel very strongly we should mistrust ourselves most when we are certain, and we should question ourselves most when we receive a rush of adrenaline by doing or saying something. Many people mistake that rush of adrenaline for the voice of conscience ... in my world view, conscience speaks in a small and inconvenient voice and it's normally saying ... "Think again."