Human Rights in Ireland

In light of the Oireachtas Justice Committee’s report on the Mental Capacity Bill which will be launched later today, I wanted to reflect on two recent ECHR cases which have demonstrated how a denial of legal capacity to disabled people, through the imposition of an adult guardian, leads to the violation of other fundamental rights – such as the right to a fair trial, the right to be informed of decisions made about the person, the right to liberty and freedom of movement, and the right to freedom from inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment. These cases – Stanev v Bulgaria and DD v Lithuania have already generated significant commentary in the disability rights movement (see here and here) – as these cases represent the first time in which the European Court has acknowledged that detention of a person in a social care home, rather than a psychiatric hospital or institution can constitute a breach of Article 5. As Ireland moves towards reforming its law on capacity, it is worth bearing in mind the comments which have been made by the European Court, especially with regard to the ways in which adult guardianship can violate the rights of disabled people. Read Full Post »

Last month, the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality last month held its second and final hearing on the proposed Mental Capacity Bill. The hearings focused on proposed amendments to the 2008 Scheme of the Mental Capacity Bill – the only published document to date which gives a concrete outline of what the legislation might look like. The 2008 Scheme has been widely criticised, by the Law Reform Commission, Amnesty International, the Alzheimers Society of Ireland and others, for failing to adequately protect the rights of adults who might become subject to guardianship – and for adopting an inflexible courts-based process for determinations relating to decision-making.

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The Centre for Disability Law and Policy, Galway will co- host a seminar with Marian Harkin MEP and Phil Prendergast MEP, and in conjunction with the European Disability Forum, on the topic of ‘Genetic Discrimination – Transatlantic Perspectives on the Case for a European Level Legal Response’.  The seminar is taking place from 2- 6pm on 6th March 2012 in the European Parliament in Brussels.  There will be no registration fee to attend – and some places are still available.

The purpose of this event is to bring together key stakeholders in the area to examine and further highlight the case for a European level legal and policy response to protect the privacy of genetic information and to prevent genetic discrimination, particularly in the employment and insurance contexts. Speakers include: Professor Yann Joly (Centre of Genomics and Policy, McGill University, Montreal, Canada), Professor Peter Blanck (Burton Blatt Institute, Syracuse University, USA), Avv. Dr Delia Ferri (Faculty of Law, University of Verona), Peter Hustinx (European Data Protection Supervisor), Dima Yared (Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights), Professor Ciaran Morrison (Centre for Chromosome Biology, School of Natural Sciences, NUI, Galway), J Patrick Clarke (member of European Disability Forum Executive Committee/President, Down Syndrome Ireland) and Marian Harkin (Member of the European Parliament).

The Centre for Disability Law and Policy hosted a conference on 19th November 2011 entitled ‘Genetic Discrimination – Transatlantic Perspectives on the Case for a European Level Legal Response’.  The conference highlighted the interdisciplinary nature of this area and focused on the interaction between genetic science, technology, ethics and the law, and in particular, how best to regulate this complex area.  On foot of the scientific and legal expertise offered, and on consideration of the potential for abuse and the fundamental human rights at stake, the conference strongly indicated a need for an appropriate regulatory response at European level to protect the privacy of genetic information and to prevent genetic discrimination.  The event in March 2012 aims to build upon the discussion generated from the conference last November and further highlight this issue at European level as one which merits attention.

To register for this event, please go to: http://conference.ie/Conferences/index.asp?Conference=161

Please contact aisling.depaor@nuigalway.ie for further details.

Today, the Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality will hear submissions from civil society groups on the proposed Mental Capacity Bill. The organisations participating in the hearing are: Inclusion Ireland, Members of the Psychological Society of Ireland, the Alzheimers Society of Ireland, the National Institute for Intellectual Disability (Trinity College Dublin) and the Mental Health Commission. David Stanton TD, Chair of the Committee, has acknowledged that this piece of legislation is viewed as the main barrier to Ireland’s ratification of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and has stated: “We hope that the contribution made by this Committee will help to create a progressive law which ultimately enables Ireland to ratify this crucial convention.” This is an important point to emphasise – as while calls for the legislation to be published have been repeatedly made since Ireland signed the Convention in 2007, it is vital that such legislation is actually compliant with the Convention, otherwise, it will not achieve the desired goal, which is to enable Ireland to ratify the CRPD.

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Ireland lost two great citizens yesterday: Mary Raftery and John McCarthy. Both fought bravely to expose injustice in Irish society, through journalism and through activism. Their work has given voice to many who have long been ignored by society – people who were institutionalised, and whose freedom and dignity were denied by the treatment they received.

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Following tonight’s successful performance of Whoop it up for Liberty! in Druid Theatre, Galway we would like to share the texts from which extracts were chosen and included in the performance. This link will bring you to a google document which contains the original, full extracts, which have been modified for use in tonight’s performance. It also links the documents to their original source, if available online, and, where relevant, contains links to the images which we feel connect with the pieces chosen for the performance. Thanks again to everyone for supporting this project – we hope we have made a contribution to the open democratic arts, and to exploring further some aspects of Ireland’s human rights history. The performance has been recorded, and we hope to share some clips from the recording with you in the near future.

Many thanks to everyone who supported our funding efforts for Whoop it up for Liberty! Thanks to your support, we reached our funding target and are well on our way to producing this exciting performance in Druid Theatre, Galway on 10 December. Rehearsals are gearing up, and we have an amazing mix of people with personal experience of rights-violations, professional actors, and community activists involved in the performance.

We released many of the tickets for this event to those who donated to the project on Fund It, however, there are still a limited number of tickets available to anyone who would like to attend the performance in Galway on 10 December. The venue is fully accessible, and there will be a hearing loop provided at the performance. We are currently looking into providing other accessibility features, and would like for anyone who is interested in attending to let us know what their requirements are, and we will do our best to ensure that the performance is inclusive and accessible to all, within the constraints of our budget.

To reserve your ticket for the performance, contact Liam Thornton, and if you have specific accessibility requirements, you can contact me. We will be recording the performance on the night and will hope to make the recording available online afterwards – and will also publish the script of the performance on the blog after the performance.

 As announced in August, the Human Rights in Ireland blog will host a performance on 10 December at 6pm in Druid Theatre, Galway to celebrate Human Rights Day. The event is called 'Whoop it up for Liberty!' - an ironic quote from Connolly's Reconquest of Ireland. As part of the performance, actors, local people and community activists will read aloud from texts commemorating key moments in Irish history which relate to the theme of human rights. The performance will feature first person narratives which highlight the experiences of workers, women, people with disabilities, travellers, language rights activists, asylum seekers, children, prisoners and many others as they relate to human rights in Ireland – from historical perspectives right through to the present day. Thomas Conway, literary manager of Druid Theatre, will direct the performance, which will be followed by a question and answer session where the texts and themes will be further discussed.
 

Since this is a not-for-profit event, we are seeking support to cover our production costs. The director and actors involved are generously volunteering their time, and in order to do justice to the inspiring texts used to create the script, we would like to make this as professional an event as possible. The event has been listed as a creative venture on Fund It to secure crowd source funding for the performance. This link will take you to the Fund It page for the event where you can watch a video clip of some of the actors involved reading from a draft script - and we would appreciate if readers of the blog could repost the link via social media. Donations received will go towards the cost of hiring the venue and rehearsal space, lighting and sound, recording the performance, providing catering for the cast and crew after the performance, producing programme notes for the event, and making the performance accessible to all.

 

This will be the first time an event of this kind has been performed in Ireland, using first-person narratives to explore historical and present-day experiences of human rights across a broad range of issues: identity, belonging, democracy, politics, solidarity, and exclusion. We hope that people will contribute what they can to make the event a success – and we hope to see as many of you as possible on 10th December in Galway!

In the past 12 months, discussions about the possibility of a new Convention on the Rights of Older People have been gaining increasing momentum within the United Nations. At the second session of the UN Open-ended Working Group on Ageing in New York this month, the South American states, as a group, endorsed proposals for a new binding human rights instrument to protect the rights of older persons and expressed support for the appointment of a Special Rapporteur to strengthen the protection of the rights of older people.

However, the proposal to draft a new Convention at this juncture was opposed by the European Union on behalf of its 27 member states. The EU, and other states which were opposed to the drafting of a Convention at this stage, argued that no normative gap exists in the current international human rights framework regarding older people, and that any lack of protection is due to the failure to implement existing human rights standards. Other states which took a similar position to the EU include the US, New Zealand, Canada, China, Switzerland and Norway.

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The blog authors are organising an event in Druid Theatre, Galway on 10 December this year, to mark Human Rights Day. The event is tentatively called Human Rights in Ireland: A People’s History and is somewhat modelled on The People Speak – the documentary based on Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. The event will involve actors and non-actors alike, reading aloud excerpts from texts celebrating key moments which shaped human rights discourse in Ireland (whether on a personal or societal level). We are particularly interested in texts which relate to personal experiences and understandings of human rights, or indeed, violations of rights.

As we are currently putting together a script for the event, we welcome suggestions from you, the readers, for texts which you think are significant and relate to people’s experiences of human rights. Texts from a broad range of sources will be used – books, film, audio recordings, archival material, etc. We are particularly interested in receiving suggestions of surprising or unusual texts which we might not otherwise come across. As a rule of thumb, most of the extracts selected should not exceed about 5 minutes when read aloud. About 20 extracts in all will be included in the reading, and we are reserving a quarter of these for suggestions from the blog readers – although the final decision as to whether a text is used or not will be made by the blog authors. Suggestions can be posted in the comments below, or emailed to myself, Charles O’Mahony or Deirdre Duffy – the organisers of the event. We are aiming to complete a full draft of the script by 7 September, so if you could send us suggestions by then we would appreciate it. Further information on the event will be posted in the coming weeks – so stay tuned!