Human Rights in Ireland

On 22 March, the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva adopted the draft resolution, proposed by the United States, on reconciliation and accountability in Sri Lanka. It was issued in a context of war crimes accusations over the conduct of Sri Lankan forces in the final throes of the conflict with the LTTE (Tamil Tigers) in April-May 2009, including a chilling documentary from Channel 4’s Jon Snow which has been influential in turning international opinion against Sri Lanka’s president, Mr Rajapaksa, and his government. Read Full Post »

I participated as a witness at the South Africa session of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine which took place last month in Cape Town, from 5-7 November. The Tribunal was founded in the 1950s by the philosopher Bertrand Russell, and originally hosted by Jean-Paul Sartre. Formally calling itself the International War Crimes Tribunal, it deliberated over two sessions in 1967 on the issue of American foreign policy and military intervention in Vietnam. The overall aim, according to Russell in 1967, was to arouse consciousness in order to create mass resistance “in the smug streets of Europe and the complacent cities of North America”, and “prevent the crime of silence”. Read Full Post »

UNESCO’s 36^th General Conference begins today, running from October 25^th to November 10^th amid intense media interest since its executive committee decided to allow a vote to grant full membership to the Palestinians. Two-thirds of members will have to approve the bid in order for it to be successful.

There have been recriminations ahead of the vote, with the United States expressing “strong opposition” to the executive committee resolution. US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton has intimated that the Organisation should “think again” on its “inexplicable” decision, with Kay Granger, chair of the US Subcommittee responsible for US diplomatic funding, advocating for all US funding to be cut off; some 22% of UNESCO’s resources. A New York Times piece highlights that US legislation from the 1990s mandates a complete cut of American financing to any United Nations agency that accepts the Palestinians as a full member. Pressure indeed. Read Full Post »

The impending eviction of travellers from Dale Farm in Essex, delayed again but scheduled for Friday or Saturday, raises the question of whether Basildon Council’s actions will be a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, as directly applied in the UK Human Rights Act 1998. There have been a number of cases involving Travellers and Roma before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, but while the Roma have been relatively successful in defending their rights, the Travellers have won only one case. Read Full Post »

Amid accusations of educational apartheid in the admissions policies of Irish schools, a landmark Circuit Court ruling in Clonmel allowed an appeal by a secondary school against an Equality Authority ruling that it had indirectly discriminated against a Traveller boy in refusing to admit him. The admissions policy of the Christian Brothers High School in Clonmel is a familiar one in the Irish educational landscape: that the applicant be Catholic; that he would have attended a recognised feeder primary school; and that he would have had a father or brother who attended the school prior to him. Read Full Post »

I was the organiser for this year’s Minority Rights Summer School, held at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, NUI Galway, from 13th-17th June. It was the eleventh year of the School, which always attracts an interesting group of academics, students, activists and lobbyists, as well as those with a general interest in minority and indigenous rights and the role of human rights law in promoting equality and diversity. The programme this year saw a range of speakers, including a full day of sessions dedicated to a forum on indigenous peoples’ rights with contributions from scholars and practitioners. Read Full Post »

“The court…was of black polished marble, and very nearly as smooth as glass. It was entirely built of Irish marble, I believe, from quarries in Connemara. One effect of this construction was that the players and the ball were mirrored, as ‘in a glass, darkly’, on floor and walls — a rather distressing feature, both to the players and to the marker.”

This description is from an account of the 1890 world championships in real tennis, held in Dublin on what has become known as the ‘Guinness Court’. Real tennis is like lawn tennis, in that there is a net and players on either side. Beyond that it is a quite different game, evident when you look at a real tennis court. There are only 47 real tennis courts in the world in active use, found in the UK (which has over half the total), France, the US and Australia. The game has an involved history, and according to one theory is said to have been started by medieval monks. The galleries, or inset nets at the side and back of a real tennis court, are believed to be derived from monastic cloisters. A pivotal event of the French Revolution took place on a real tennis court, the so-called ‘tennis court oath’, the best-known depiction of which clearly shows the court, with galleries familiar to real tennis players, as well as a racket and balls in one corner.

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The tenth annual Minority Rights & Indigenous Peoples Summer School will take place from June 13-17, 2011, at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, NUI Galway. This highly acclaimed course gives an overview of the legal, political and philosophical issues pertaining to international human rights law and its relationship to minority rights and the rights of indigenous peoples. In addition, each year it gives a more in-depth perspective on a particular theme, which this year is religion.

Minorities and Religion

Religion has a fraught relationship with minority and human rights standards, being perceived at once as a right and a cause of the denial of rights. The theme of this year’s school highlights religion in contemporary minority rights discourse, focussing on issues such as: religious minorities, religion and international institutions, Islam in Europe, caste, indigenous peoples and spiritual beliefs, women and religion, genocide and defamation of religion.

The list of speakers and registration details can be seen here. It promises to be a lively and engaging course, and a unique opportunity to hear a range of insights on this fascinating and complex area.

A recent article in the Irish Times described comments by a leading Australian urban geographer, Prof. Brendan Gleeson of NUI Maynooth, that Ireland will become a ‘climate change lifeboat’. The idea is that as climate change causes rising sea levels, displacing vast overpopulated regions of the world, Ireland will be less physically affected leading to our ‘lifeboat’ status for large numbers of people who are effectively ‘climate refugees’. The BBC also reported the story, adding that if global temperatures rise by three or four degrees, as Prof. Gleeson predicts they will, the southern megacities in Africa, the sub-continental states and Asia will be the first to go under, taking with them a substantial proportion of our species. This will generate “enormous migratory shifts, as displaced and stressed populations flee the sea level rise and wildly destructive weather.” Ireland could become one of only a few habitable ‘lifeboat’ regions in the cooler extremes of the earth.

The concept of climate change refugees is a growing area of interest. For example a recent Oscar-nominated documentary film, Sun Come Up, tells the story of the Cateret Islanders of Papua New Guinea, considered the first climate change refugees as their island is predicted to sink. Another documentary, Climate Refugees, portrays “a new phenomenon in the global arena called ‘Climate Refugees’”, according to its blurb. Read Full Post »

In an article on the ‘Arab Spring’ in the Nation magazine, Rashid Khalisi highlights the fact that there has been growing debate around the potential for applying the Turkish political model  to the Arab world. When Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu recently visited Tunisia as rotating term president of the Council of Europe Commitee of Ministers, he stated: “Turkey is at the centre of the developments”. The statement is meant to convey Turkey’s support for Tunisia in the wake of the revolution, but has an undercurrent of the possibility that Turkey’s model of governance is inspiring the changes, or at least will provide a focal point for future negotiations over the shape of the post-revolutionary states. In support of this, Luxembourg’s foreign minister called on Arab nations to take Turkey as a “reference” for democratic reform.

Similarly, in the Washington Review of Turkish and Eurasian Affairs, Fevzi Bilgin discusses Turkey’s role in the post-revolutionary Middle East. The article notes that prior to the ‘Arab Spring’ itself, the most important recent development which has affected the entire Middle East region is the resurgence of Turkey as a major player. He notes that when Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan called on Mubarak to listen to the demands of the street, the Egyptian protesters in Tahrir Square “chanted his name over and over again”. The belief is that the people of the Middle East are “aspiring to a political system like the Turkish democracy”. Read Full Post »