Human Rights in Ireland

The Centre for Criminal Justice and Human Rights (CCHJR) at University College Cork is pleased to announce that the 6^th Annual Postgraduate Conference will take place on Thursday, 26^th April 2012. The conference is aimed at postgraduate researchers working in the areas of criminal law, criminal justice and human rights. The call for papers closes on 20 February 2012.

The theme for this year’s event is “Transformation and Reform: Structures and Mechanisms for Rights-Based Protections”. The aim is to examine the implications for individuals and rights-based protections that arise from recent proposals for major reforms at the national, European and international level, including proposals for changes to the Irish legal profession and potential constitutional amendments, reforms of the treaties and structures of the European Union, and the UN Treaty Body Reform process. This theme is intended to encourage debate and reflection on the challenging question of ensuring the protection of fundamental rights during periods of change and crisis. Read Full Post »

It is now ten years since the United States began to hold suspected terrorists in Guantánamo Bay. At the time, the motivation was clearly to find a place outside of the immediate theatre of war where people could be held and interrogated without oversight from the federal courts. It seemed, to the US government, that Guantánamo Bay was just such a place as it was under the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States but strictly speaking outside of its territory and so—it was thought—outside of the jurisdiction of the courts. Although the number of people detained in Guantánamo is relatively small compared to the number of those held in other detention centres over the course of the War on Terror, including Bagram Airbase near Kabul, the camp has become a lightning rod for rights-based opposition to the United States’ contemporary approach to counter-terrorism. Closing Guantánamo Bay was a central plank of Barack Obama’s election campaign in 2008 and one of his first acts as President was to sign an Executive Order committing to its closure. This followed an important series of decisions (summarised here) by the US Supreme Court confirming that at least some parts of the Constitution applied to Guantánamo Bay and moving it—as I have written before—“towards legality”, i.e. towards constitutionalist oversight. Bearing all this in mind, how can it be that this prison remains open? Read Full Post »

We delighted to welcome this guest post from Senator Jillian Van Turnhout on the efforts of the Independent Group in the Seanad to criminalise the purchase of sex.

On 12 October 2012, the Independent Group of Senators tabled a motion in Seanad Éireann to criminalise the purchase of sex in Ireland in order to curb prostitution and trafficking. The impetus for the motion was twofold. First, recognition that demand for prostitution in Ireland is intrinsically linked to increased cases of woman and girls being trafficked into and around Ireland for sexual exploitation. Second, recognition that trafficking for sexual exploitation is a modern form of slavery, an egregious human rights abuse and a violation of international law.

Having given my consideration to a number of arguments against criminalising the purchase of sex in Ireland, I find myself unconvinced by them. Read Full Post »

I have a column in the Irish Examiner today advocating a ‘no’ vote in the judges’ pay referendum. Unfortunately that part of the paper is not up on the Examiner‘s website, so I have posted the text I sent to the paper below. Apart from tidying up a word here and there for syntax, the content of the column was not changed. (People might also be interested in fellow HRinI writer, Eoin Daly, arguing for a ‘yes’ vote in an op-ed in yesterday’s Irish Times)

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It is difficult to convince people to take a long-term view of the referendum on judicial pay, but the Constitution will be around long after the economic crisis is over and when we vote on it we should try to make sure that we get it right. In this, as in most other things, the devil is in the detail and not in the easy rhetoric of ‘fairness’ and ‘savings’. Read Full Post »

Together with colleagues Rónán Kennedy (NUI Galway), Paul MacMahon (Cambridge), Séan Ó Conaill (UCC) and former Chief Justice Ronan Keane, I have been involved in putting together a special issue of the Irish Law Times on the Judicial Pay Amendment. The issue is now on sale and available to those with a subscription on Westlaw IE. People can also email me (fiona.delondras[at]ucd.ie) and I can send a pdf version of the entire special issue to them. The short introduction to the special issue offers a flavour of the arguments advanced:

INTRODUCTION: THE JUDGES’ REMUNERATION REFERENDUM

Dr Fiona de Londras, UCD School of Law

On October 27, 2011 the Irish electorate will be asked to vote not only for a new President and to expand the powers of parliamentary inquiries in this jurisdiction, but also to amend Art.35.5 of Bunreacht na hÉireann. That provision currently prohibits the reduction of judicial remuneration. That prohibition exists, of course, for very sound reasons connected largely to judicial independence but connected also to an implicit recognition of the broader constitutionalist power of control over the public purse. Debate on the proposed amendment is taking place in a fraught and difficult climate in which most claims relating to the payment of public servants are articulated and responded to from either an offensive or defensive position but rarely from a position of balance. In this special issue we attempt, inasmuch as anyone can, to remove the discussion from its immediate economic context and instead to relocate it in the larger constitutional context to which it belongs. Read Full Post »

A conference on the topic of ‘Fairness, Justice and Human Rights: Realising Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ESCR) in the UK’ takes place in London today and tomorrow. The conference is organised by Just Fair in partnership with the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the Law Society of England and Wales, and the Human Rights Centre (University of Essex) and will be held at the Law Society. Day one, on 21 October 2011, is a mix of plenary and breakout sessions. The plenary sessions include discussions on the effect that budget cuts will have and whether ESC rights can be protected by a bill or rights. This day features keynote speakers such as Professor Francesca Klug OBE, exploring Human Rights and examining whether Civil, Political and ESC rights should be interrelated, inter-dependable or durable. There are also interactive plenary sessions including discussions surrounding budget cuts and the rights to adequate housing, healthcare, education and employment. Day two, on 22 October 2011, has more focus on practical working sessions on strategies to protect vulnerable rights and groups. This day includes a keynote from Justice Albie Sachs exploring ESC Rights and a plenary session observing the experiences of ESC rights in other countries. On both days there will be several workshops covering topics such as ESC Rights Strategies and  Vulnerable Rights, with poetry, film, photography and conversation from the Poverty Truth Commission and ATD Fourth World during lunch and the drinks reception. The full programme is available here, and includes presentations from our colleagues Aoife Nolan (Durham) and Pádraic Kenna (NUI Galway).

Here on HRinI we have now had a number of posts on the 29th (judicial pay) and 30th (Oireachtas inquiries) proposed amendments to the Constitution. In the main, however, those posts have been written in an argumentative way, i.e. with someone trying to promote the arguments for a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ vote. You can find Eoin’s posts on the 30th amendment here and here. My posts arguing for a ‘no’ vote to the 29th amendment are here and here, but Eoin advocates a ‘yes’ vote here. As well as these kinds of argumentative interventions, there is a need for objective information on the referenda. The Referendum Commission gives some information on its dedicated site here, however it no longer outlines the arguments for and against proposed referenda. To try to fill that gap, the Constitutional Studies Group in UCD School of Law, led by my colleague Dr Eoin Carolan, has put together short and objective guides to the proposals. You can find the guide to the 29th (judicial pay) here and the guide to the 30th (Oireachtas inquiries) is here.

The International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy is currently seeking submissions for the second edition of the International Journal on Human Rights and Drug Policy. The deadline is 15 November 2011. The Journal is the first and only international peer reviewed law journal focusing exclusively on human rights and drug policy issues. Established in 2009, the International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy is dedicated to developing and promoting innovative and high quality legal and human rights scholarship on issues related to drug laws, policy and enforcement. It pursues this mandate by publishing original, peer-reviewed research on drug issues as they relate to international human rights law, international humanitarian law, international criminal law and public international law. Submissions will be considered under the following categories: Read Full Post »

This Thursday, October 20th, the Irish Society of International Law will hold a dialogue on European consensus entitled “HOW TO DISREGARD CONSENSUS? CORPORAL PUNISHMENT, TRANSSEXUALS AND ABORTION”. It will take place at 6pm in the Arbitration Room, 1st Floor, Distillery Building, 145-151 Church Street, Dublin 7. The main speaker will be Kanstantsin Dzehtsiarou and I (Fiona de Londras) will be acting as discussant. This informal seminar will consider the role of European consensus in decision-making at the European Court of Human Rights and whether internal consensus – i.e. consensus within an individual country – or a broader interna-tional trend, can justify a departure from commonly accepted standards amongst states parties to the ECHR. Discussion will focus on three cases: Tyrer v UK (which concerned corporal punishment), Goodwin v UK (transsexuals’ rights) and A, B and C v Ireland (abortion).

Attendance is free to ISIL members and membership will be available at the door (€30 per annum/€15 conc.). The price for non-members is €10. Certificates of attendance for CPD purposes will be available. To confirm your attendance please email info@isil.ie

On October 27th the electorate will vote for a new President and on two constitutional referenda. Both of these have received some attention here on HRinI in the past: I wrote on the judges’ pay referendum here and Eoin wrote on the Oireachtas Enquiries referendum here and here. In my earlier post I outlined some broad concerns about the judges’ pay referendum in the broader context of proposed and actual constitutional reform. In this post I want to look a little more closely at the wording, and outline what I consider to be some areas of ambiguity or uncertainty that, to me, justify voting no in the forthcoming referendum. I want, at the outset, to make it clear that I do not object to the proposition that there ought to be some way of reducing judicial pay in limited and exceptional circumstances. The reason I will be voting no in the forthcoming referendum is primarily because the amendment does not, in my view, put in place sufficient safeguards to ensure exceptionality of reductions; a situation that is only exacerbated by developments that suggest the Dáil will become ever more powerful in the near future. I want to start, however, by addressing a simple question that has arisen time and again when I have been speaking to people about the proposed amendment: ‘what is the big deal with judicial pay anyway?’ Read Full Post »