Human Rights in Ireland

Today The Guardian launches its Legal Network; a dedicated website for consideration of law, and legal analysis. Here at HRinI we are very pleased to have been invited to be a partner in this venture. This means that from time to time you will see some posts from HRinI reproduced on The Guardian‘s website, and you may also see us using some Guardian content here  on occasion. In fact, Sinéad Ring’s excellent post on Representations of Justice in Sexual Abuse Cases is featured as one of the network’s first posts. Welcome to all of our readers from The Guardian; if you like what you see remember you can follow us on Twitter, become a fan on Facebook, and subscribe to our RSS feed.

We are pleased to welcome a third guest post from Kieran Walsh. In this post, Kieran continues Mairead’s discussion of forced marriage in the Republic and considers whether child abduction law could be used in Ireland to protect children from being forced into marriage. He argues, in particular, for a child-focused approach to child abduction, which would allow the relevant law to be deployed effectively even outside the realm of custody disputes.

The recent forced marriage decision in Northern Ireland raises some interesting, and perhaps interminable, problems for cross-border levels of compliance with children’s rights and child protection instruments. As outlined previously by Mairead, the Northern Ireland courts granted an order to under the Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Act 2007 which prevented two girls, aged 12 and 14, from travelling to Pakistan where they were to be married. Ireland has no similar means of protecting children from forced marriage.

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A rather dispiriting headline appears in the Irish Times today ‘UN climate summit ‘likely to fail’. (I have posted on this topic here and here) The basis of this article is the comment yesterday made by ‘British officials’ that a deal on climate change could take at least another 12 months. This rather depressing comment was made at the Barcelona pre-summit talks that are currently taking place. These talks are part of wider programme of pre-summit talks that have been held under the auspices of the United Nations.  The Barcelona meeting is supposed to establish a firm basis on which the Copenhagen talks agree the basis of a new treaty.  According to the Times all hope is now lost that anything coherent or binding can emerge from Copenhagen. Instead the sources claimed that a further summit would have to be held in December 2010 to finally agree a treaty. The Bali Summit of 2007 established the agenda for these talks with the aim of having a ratified treaty by the end of 2009. This rather short timeframe was established as it was clear that time is of the essence with regard to climate change. (In contrast the Doha Round of negotiations at the WTO have been ongoing since 2001, though the WTO is also keeping a close eye on events in Barcelona and Copenhagen)

According to the Times there are over 1,000 different disagreements over the current text. David Milliband told the House of Commons yesterday that there was no Plan B and that renewed impetus was required to ensure some solid progress at Copenhagen. Though a consensus appears to be emerging that an outline agreement maybe all that can be achieved at Copenhagen. The fact that Ban Ki-moon appears to agree that  it is unlikely that this a binding treaty can be agreed in December seems to put the nail in the coffin of an agreement.

In the Times Benedict Dempsey from Save the Children’s, said: “The cost of any delay to a climate deal will be counted in children’s lives. Save the Children estimates that 250,000 children could be killed by climate change next year.”

The imperatives of agreeing a settlement are clear though it will probably be dependent on the US, China and the EU to agree to the slashing of carbon emissions. On Wednesday in the Irish Times is was reported that both the US and the EU were going to redouble their efforts. If the US is going to make good on their ‘ever-expanding suite of measures‘ it will have to take the lead as the EU (with the possible exception of David Milliband) appears to have lost its will.

It is reported in today’s Irish Examiner that former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern can not understand  the choice of President Obama for this year’s Nobel Prize. (I already posted on the surprise choice of the Nobel Commitee here). Mr. Ahern is quoted as saying that the choice ‘doesn’t make any sense’ and further that President Obama is probably embarrassed by his selection. The quotes come from an interview in Time Magazine with Mr. Ahern (It helpfully notes that Taoiseach is pronounced ‘Tea-shock’). In the article Mr. Ahern blames the media for his decision to step down as Taoiseach noting that they ‘kept after me’ though adding that he would have left office anyway in 2009 . He also considers that the recession can also be put at the media’s door. He asserts that when he attempted to introduce a property tax ’the media killed me.’ While acknowledging there were mistakes made during the boom years, he would appear to be suggesting that this was largely out of his control and in the media’s. When questioned on whether he would consider running for Irish President he states that he has not considered it

It is in his remarks regarding President Obama that in many ways Mr. Ahern is at his most scathing arguing that if there were prizes for good mood music Mr. Obama would have won two of them and that the prize does not make sense. While I would agree with Mr. Ahern that the choice was ill-judged as I mentioned in the earlier post, it is strange that he is so virulent on the topic. The Examiner article notes that Mr. Ahern was once considered a possible winner of the Prize for his role in the Northern Ireland Peace Process, one wonders whether this is why Mr. Ahern is so concerned that it only be awarded to those who have achieved something and not on aspiration only.

In a follow-up to my earlier post regarding the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Climate’s Change proposed Heads for a new Climate Change Bill it has emerged that the EU has agreed a joint negotiating position ahead of the Copenhagen Conference this December. The EU has sought to take the lead at the Conference and in settling on a joint platform it is hoped that the EU will be able to push others into agreement.

One of the main stumbling blocks has been on the question of how much financial support as well as  the degree of technology transfer that should be given to countries of the Global South. While some of these countries, such as China and India, are emerging as major polluters, others have little or no impact upon rates of climate change. However it is the countries of the Global South who will suffer most from droughts and floods should Climate Change keep going unabated.  The UN estimates that yields from rain-fed agriculture could fall by up to 50% in some African countries and that up to 200 million people could be displaced by the effects of climate change by 2050. Obviously the Global North is better placed to deal with these changes than the Global South both financially and with regard to technology. There has been extensive research into this sponsored by both the UN and NGOs.

The EU at today’s summit agreed a joint position on climate finance, though an actual formula for establishing a country’s ability to pay was not settled upon. They also agreed to cut emissions to 30% below 1990 levels by 2020.  Eastern European countries have been particularly concerned that any cuts in emissions will disproportionately affect their abilities to expand and develop their own economies, but with the intervention of Ban-ki Moon were convinced to agree a deal. While the agreed platform by the EU is more likely to lead to success at Copenhagen as Lavanya Rajamani has pointed out one of the greatest impediments to an agreement is the lack of trust in the Global North to fulfill its promises, the lack of success of the Kyoto Protocol is a prime example of this. It will be interesting to watch the various interests formulate their positions over the next month. What is clear is that comprehensive action must be taken soon.

The upcoming Climate Conference in Copenhagen is fast becoming a central point for debate and controversy. The Conference is supposed to reexamine the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and to consider what steps need to be taken to reduce the rate and pace of climate change and to suggest solutions to the problems that will and have already arisen from the temperature changes that are now inevitable.  The Kyoto Protocol, which contains the cap-and-trade system (a system which allows countries who underused their carbon allocation to sell the excess to another state which has surpassed its limit)  and other legally binding limits on carbon emission and reduction has had limited success in stemming the rate of climate change. The use of ‘soft law’ solutions to international environmental issues has failed in its attempts to gently push states into compliance and it is now admitted even by the United States and China, two countries’ whose carbon emissions are of such a magnitude that without their co-operation it matters little what other states attempt to do, that action must be taken. Mairead blogged about the human rights link on HRinI here.

In Ireland progress towards legally binding limits have been slow with little impetus put into pulling back from the levels of current emissions. The Oireachtas Joint Committee on Climate Change and Energy Security announced today, ‘Unless there is a clear regulatory framework supportive of Ireland meeting its EU and international commitments, Government, investors, emitters and consumers will not have a context within which to take behaviour changing initiatives.’ It also set out Heads of a Climate Change Bill which is based upon what has already been introduced in other states. The proposed bill would include: the setting of national greenhouse gas emission reduction targets, setting of energy and electricity efficiency targets by 2020 and the setting up of  an independent Climate Change Commission. While this sounds marvelous one can’t help but think that this is a preemptive attempt to get around any international commitments that the EU signs up for at Copenhagen.

In an article in the Irish Times Michael Casey, formally of the Central Bank, outlined his views on the relationship between Ireland, the EU and the International Monetary Fund. The IMF was established in 1944 to promote international monetary cooperation, exchange rate stability, and orderly exchange arrangements; and to provide temporary financial assistance to countries to help ease balance of payments adjustment. Prior to the financial crises the IMF was considered by many to be at its best an organisation on the brink of irrelevance or alternatively an organisation which had prolonged underdevelopment in the Global South through the promotion of liberal economic policies and the strict conditions under which it granted relief to states in dire financial need. At both the 2008 London and 2009 Pittsburgh G-20 Conferences it has reemerged as a fundamental actor in international economic relations.  Part of this process has been the IMF’s attempt to rehabilitate its image. It has set up a  faster loans procedure aimed at states with traditionally good economic track records, to enable them to make use of short-term credit facilities. This is known as the Flexible Credit Line (FCL). Mexico was the first state to make use of this facility.

Casey in his article remarks that  Mary Harney’s assertation that if Ireland did not make cuts the IMF would be called in, correctly makes the point that the IMF is characterised  here ‘like the big bad wolf’ to be avoided if it all possible. Casey is correct that the snobbery attached to going to the IMF, an organisation that is now considered by many to be only to give a helping hand to the Global South, can be short sighted, though I would agree with him that there may be better local (EU) solutions if the economy required a bailout. However the characterisation of the IMF as the purveyor of doom is incorrect. While its warning system failed with regard to the current financial crises, its recent reports on Ireland tend to have more than a ring of truth about them. The Government may regret not advocating a more honest policy with regard to Ireland options, should Ireland be forced to go to the IMF,  if the horror which the Irish people  feel towards the big bad wolf resembles Little Red Riding Hood the blame will squarely be at the Government’s  feet.

The Nobel Academy’s surprise announcement that Barack Obama will be the recipient of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize for his, ‘for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples’ is an unexpected turn of events. The Nobel prize has been awarded since 1901, though it is not given out in years that the Academy do not believe that work undertaken in the previous year has been of such importance that granting the prize would be worthwhile. There have been five Irish winners of the prize; John Hume and David Trimble in 1998, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan in 1976 as well as Sean McBride in 1974.  Previous US Presidents have won the award though not while in office; for example, Jimmy Carter in 2002  for his work with the Carter Foundation.

The Norwegian Committee has emphasised Obama’s policy as regard to nuclear weapons, though given Russian President Medvedev‘s agreement to enter into talks regarding Russian policy on the reduction of nuclear stockpiles, it is somewhat surprising that the Academy did not seek to award some similar acknowledgement to him.

The other reason given by the Academy is with regard to America’s re-engagement with international diplomacy and law under the Obama administration. However this seems to simply reward the type of engagement that most other countries carry on with the vast majority of the time.  While certainly the Bush years were not the time of multilateral engagement and openness by the United States, it seems strange to reward a President for returning to normal diplomacy.

While this is not as strange a choice as say Henry Kissinger by the Academy, I do sincerely hope that Barack Obama works to deserve the accolade bestowed by working towards peace in Afghanistan and ensuring a peaceful solution can be found to Iran’s nuclear policies.