Human Rights in Ireland

Durham Law School and the Faculty of Laws, Oxford, will host a one-day workshop on Economic and Social Rights in a Time of Austerity on 30 June in Oxford.

Date: 30 June 2011
Venue: Oxford Faculty of Laws

The last two years have seen growing evidence of the deleterious global impact of the economic crisis on the poorest in society. Domestically, there is increasing concern about the potential impacts of the Comprehensive Spending Review and other ‘austerity measures’ on the most vulnerable in the UK. At the same time, there has been a rising interest in the development of human rights accountability and adjudication in the area of economic and social rights (ESR) at the domestic, European and international levels.

This raises the question of whether ESR can play a role (whether as justiciable ‘hard’ rights or as normative values shaping and influencing policy) in challenging attempts by government to roll back basic entitlements of the poorest in society, particularly in relation to housing, social welfare and children’s rights. In light of this, the workshop aims to explore the role of human rights, and particularly ESR, in the context of austerity policies fashioned in the wake of the global financial crisis. It does so though focussing on four main themes: Monitoring, Mainstreaming, Legal Processes and Equality. It features leading ESR experts working in law, academia, the public sector and civil society. Read Full Post »

The Re-Engineering the Corporation ESRC series based at Queen’s University Belfast, in conjunction with the Journal of Human Rights and the Environment, will run a seminar on Human Rights and the Corporation on June 28th and 29th 2011. The seminar will take place at Queen’s University Belfast, hosted by the Institute of Governance in the School of Law.

The seminar will take place to coincide with a special issue of the Journal of Human Rights and the Environment (Vol 3:1, March 2012), on corporate environmental responsibilities.

The seminar is organised by Prof. Sally Wheeler, Dr. Anna Grear and Dr. Ciarán O’Kelly.

More information is available here.

If you wish to submit a paper please send an abstract to Dr Ciaran O’Kelly. Expenses will be covered for PhD students and for speakers.

The European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC) is accepting original articles and other submissions (book reviews, interviews with key figures and conference reports) for its Roma Rights journal (1/2011) from a broad range of disciplines addressing the topic: Roma and Politics: A chance for change?

Participatory democracy is one of the fundamental principles of Europe, as promulgated by European institutions. This concept suggests that a citizen’s active involvement in the decision-making process should go beyond merely voting in the elections. A participatory democracy should create opportunities for citizens to meaningfully contribute to decision-making and broaden the range of people who have access to such opportunities. Only through making participatory democracy a reality can a society go beyond representative democracy where voting is the main form of influencing decision-making and most power is vested in the parliament and government. In a participatory democracy all groups and individuals have opportunities to reflect their particular concerns, issues, problems and solutions.

And yet even representative democracy is an unfulfilled principle in the case of Europe’s Roma. While Romani communities and individuals continue to face severe discrimination and exclusion, they are still not in a position to raise their own voice to policy-makers Read Full Post »

Jurist reports today that the ACLU is suing Michigan over life sentences for juveniles, alleging that such measures constitute a violation of the Eighth Amendment. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan against the Governor of Michigan, the Director of the Michigan Department of Corrections and the Chair of the Michigan Parole Board.

According to the ACLU press release,

The lawsuit charges that a Michigan sentencing scheme that denies the now-adult plaintiffs an opportunity for parole and a fair hearing to demonstrate their growth, maturity and rehabilitation constitutes cruel and unusual punishment and violates their constitutional rights.

The ACLU highlights that Michigan law requires that children as young as 14 who are charged with certain felonies be tried as adults and, if convicted, Read Full Post »

As discussion around the forthcoming budget intensifies, a report on current budget allocations bodes poorly for the state’s adherence to its budget-related human rights obligations.

Yesterday, RTE reported that the Department of Education has failed to spend almost half of the budget granted to it for buildings.

With two months to go to the end of the year, the Department of Education has yet to spend almost half of the 2010 budget allocated to it to build new schools and classrooms.

According to the report, new figures show the Department has spent €381m out of a total of €712m granted to it this year for capital projects – a figure that is ‘substantially behind the Department’s own projections for this time of the year’.

RTE highlighted that while 10% of this budget can be carried over to next year, any other remaining funds will be returned to the Department of Finance. The Department of Education has attributed its under-spend to dramatically reduced building costs.

While it is commendable and that last year’s budget maintained strong levels of capital funding for education, the failure of the state to employ the resources allocated for education-related capital projects calls into question its adherence to its international human rights obligations – particularly those under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and Read Full Post »

Today’s Irish Examiner reports that a new wording for a children’s rights referendum is now being drafted by the Attorney General.

According to the report,

Taoiseach Brian Cowen told the Dáil that the all-party consensus and the wording resulted in a “range of unintended policy and resource implications”.

The suggestion that the wording proposed by the Oireachtas Committee on the Constitutional Amendment on Children gives rise to a number of implications that were previously unforeseen by government seems highly surprising given the involvement of government party representatives in the Committee’s work, including the drafting of the proposed wording. Indeed, given the time already spent by the Committee on the drafting, it is disappointing and frustrating that its work appears to have simply been set aside only for the ‘drafting process’ to be assumed by yet another actor – this time, the AG. Read Full Post »

RTE reports today that four Leaving Cert students have been refused an injunction by the High Court forcing the HSE to fund their return to school in Dublin. According to RTE, “the four, who arrived in Ireland from Africa as unaccompanied minors two years ago, were moved to adult accommodation for asylum seekers in Galway when they reached the end of the school year and had turned 18″.

The Irish Times states that they “are seeking a High Court injunction requiring the HSE to put into place an appropriate aftercare plan, including the provision of finances, that would allow them to complete their Leaving Certificate examinations at the schools in Dublin they previously attended. The injunction would remain in place pending a full hearing of their action”. Read Full Post »

In a landmark decision, Communication 296/05, Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) v The Sudan, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights ruled on a communication centring on allegations of a wide range of human rights violations committed by the Sudanese government and non-state actors against the people of Darfur.

The ruling, released on 29 July, was made in a case brought by the Geneva-based international human rights group, the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE), against the Sudanese government in 2005. In its decision, the African Commission found Sudan responsible for large-scale forced evictions and violations of a wide range of human rights, including the rights to life, housing, sfood, health, judicial remedies and to be free from torture, including rape.

While there are a number of important aspects to this groundbreaking decision, including that fact that this decision came from an African tribunal applying an African human rights instrument, it principally constitutes a very significant addition to the economic and social rights jurisprudence of the Commission. Read Full Post »

Yesterday saw the launch of the QUB Budget Analysis Project’s report on Budgeting for Social Housing in Northern Ireland: A Human Rights Analysis. The report finds that social housing provision in Northern Ireland is not adequately funded to comply with international human rights standards.

The Project Team has analysed the Northern Ireland government’s spending on social housing, and has found that that it does not comply with international legal obligations to use the maximum available resources to ensure progressive realisation of the right to adequate housing set out in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

Since devolution, there has been a significant increase in the waiting list for social housing which currently stands at approximately 40,000 households. There has also been a rise in ‘housing stress’(1) and households ‘presenting as homeless’ (2). The report finds that in this context, insufficient funding for new social housing represents a violation of international human rights law. Read Full Post »