Human Rights in Ireland

Last Sunday Adrian Weckler had a piece in the Sunday Business Post reporting a conversation with Minister for State, Séan Sherlock (left), about his intention to introduce legislation that would provide for extensive ISP blocking in Ireland (summary on TJ McIntyre’s blog). Detail is somewhat light, although unsurprisingly so really as the provisions are to be contained in a Statutory Instrument and therefore will not be susceptible to open parliamentary debate and contestation. Minister Sherlock is engaging extensively on this matter on his twitter page, and argues that the SI simply clarifies the law in light of the decision in EMI v UPC, the difficulty seems to be in terms of clarity and scope. In essence, the idea is to allow for websites that carry copyrighted material to be blocked, which on the face of it seems to be a laudable enough objective. After all, the holder of intellectual property does require protection from piracy, and it is quite legitimate for the state to undertake steps to prevent illegal copyright infringement. The core difficulty from a human rights perspective is the potential scope of this power. Read Full Post »

We are delighted to welcome this guest post from Verona Ní Dhrisceoil. Verona is currently completing a PhD in the area of law and language rights in University College Cork, under the supervision of Professor Siobhan Mullally. Her PhD has been funded by the Higher Education Authority.  Verona has worked as a legal researcher for the Law Reform Commission of Ireland and the Irish Penal Reform Trust, and in 2010, was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship.

Recent government announcements proposing a Review of the Official Languages Act 2003 and a merging of the Office of the Language Commissioner with the Office of the Ombudsman have brought Irish language rights issues to the forefront of public and academic debate. The two separate but related proposals arise as part of the government’s National Plan for Recovery.

In March 2011, the government published an economic recovery plan titled Towards Recovery: Programme for National Government 2011-2016. In it, seven pledges were made to the Irish language under the An Ghaeilge agus An Ghaeltacht section. With specific reference to legislative protection, the Programme stated that a review of the Official Languages Act 2003 (OLA) will be carried out “to ensure expenditure on the language is best targeted towards the development of the language and that obligations are imposed appropriately in response to demand from citizens.” On this basis, the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, launched A Review of the Official Languages Act, in November 2011. As part of the review process, the Department has invited submissions evaluating the implementation of the Act, from interested parties. Submissions are to be made to the Department on or before the 31 January 2012. As part of the consultative process, the Department has also published a bilingual survey on its website to afford respondents the opportunity to indicate their views on the provision of public services in the Irish language.

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The thorny issue of secularism and religious diversity has entered the (nascent) French presidential race. Eva Joly, a popular Franco-Norwegian public figure who became famous for tackling corruption and environmental abuse as an investigating magistrate, entered the fray this week with a suggestion that the feast days of Yom Kippour and Aïd-el-kebir should be recognised by the State. The candidate for the Europe Écologie-Les Verts party, decried how Sarkozy’s presidency had set back the cause of equality, citing educational “apartheid” and the “undignified” treatment of those living in the disadvantaged banlieues. She  advocated measures which would ensure “equal treatment for religions in the public sphere”, including the addition of the Muslim and Jewish public holidays. She argued that in treating religions equally, this would advance rather than offend the distinct French tradition of state secularism or laïcité, in ensuring that public holidays were not attuned exclusively to the Christian calendar.

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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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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 »

The publication of the Bassiouni Report into human rights abuses in Bahrain in late November seemed to offer a turning point for international human rights. This Blog has previously examined some of the claims laid against Bahrain during the security crackdown against Shiite protesters during the Arab Spring (see here). Bahrain’s reaction to the welter of international criticism of the actions of its security forces (see Amnesty International’s new report upon the Arab Spring, “Year of Rebellion”, p.32-36 for a useful overview), however, has been very different from those of other Arab governments. Read Full Post »

On January 19 next Martin Scheinin, former UN Special Rapporteur for the Protection of Human Rights in the Pursuit of Counter-Terrorism and Professor of International Law at the European University Institute will give a lecture entitled “UN Security Council Terrorist Listing and Judicial Review: The Current State of Play”. The lecture, hosted by the Centre of European Law at King’s College London, will be chaired by David Anderson Q.C. of Brick Court Chambers. Anderson is the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation and Visiting Professor at King’s College London. The event promises to explore some of the difficult issues surrounding asset-freezing at UN and EU level. The lecture will be hosted at Parliament Chamber at Inner Temple. It is open to the public but registration is required. To register, see the CEL website.

Recently, there have been the rumblings of an emergent pan-Latin American student movement. Crucially, this potential movement coheres around the demand for a right to education. In Colombia and Chile a new front is being fought against the creation and maintenance of private education and the implicit commodification of learning. However, this emergent trans-continental rights-demand is not simply another traditional usage of rights. Very often, when we hear ‘human rights’ we think about them in the most legalistic of senses. They are fetishized as that which the state may guarantee for the subject. As noted by all sorts of critical theorists, such an identification leads to a thorough limitation of political agency. The political subject is figured simply as the individual in need of the state’s protection. I have recently argued, in Human Rights and Constituent Power, that we must begin to think about a different human rights,  a differential human rights. This idea of rights would have, as its condition of existence, a fundamentally split nature. On one side is the closure implicit in the juridical form, but on the other is the radical political demand to reshape the world. I have suggested that we might term this second limb ‘right-ing’ – in that it is a potent and creative process rather than something which is always already given. Let me develop the idea a little more in the context of the radical demand for a right to education instantiated in Chile and Colombia.

The ‘Chilean Winter’ has seen massive student demonstrations against one of the most privatized educational systems in the world. Joined by trade unions and other left organizations, the students have mobilized and manifested themselves in public space. They have fought for the re-establishment of public institutions which would be run on a not-for-profit basis. They have argued against the private universities and secondary schools that  render education as a commodity. Read Full Post »

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.

US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton today delivered a speech in Geneva to mark Human Rights day. This speech focused on LGBT human rights and is quoted in full below. It is certainly worth taking the time to read or watch, the video can be watched here.

Good evening, and let me express my deep honor and pleasure at being here. I want to thank Director General Tokayev and Ms. Wyden along with other ministers, ambassadors, excellencies, and UN partners. This weekend, we will celebrate Human Rights Day, the anniversary of one of the great accomplishments of the last century.

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