Human Rights in Ireland

The word at the forefront of everyone’s mind for the next two weeks will be ‘referendum’ – whether one is required or, from a more jaundiced perspective, whether the government has leveraged the Treaty text sufficiently to evade one. In this blog, I want to explore why even the most careerist of us should not envy the position of Attorney General Maire Whelan this weekend.

So firstly to explain my title: a three shell game is the one played at carnivals where after three shells are shuffled with bewildering speed, you have to guess under which shell the pea is hidden. It is a useful image for understanding the game that is currently being played out by politicians across the EU. The goal has been to confuse and keep events moving, not allowing them to settle at any point, shifting rapidly between politics, economics and law, to give the markets, and the people an impression of action in the absence of concrete result.  The creation of the Fiscal Treaty, represents a rare moment of substance in a process of rhetoric and politicking. From the commentary of the last number of days, many believe it to be incoherent economics, and neither, as I think we’ll see, is it particularly coherent law. It is clear, by process of elimination, that politics, and German and French electoral politics in particular, are the key to understanding its difficult birth.

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The old adage that a week is a long time in politics is one that is readily accepted in liberal polities, though it reflects more the rapid changes of personal power due to scandals and party shifts than the glacial progress of modern politics. It may explain the rather exaggerated expectations of what can be achieved in the space of a year in societies with a far weaker state apparatus. Yesterday marked the one year anniversary of the beginning of the Egyptian revolution and has attracted tens of thousands of people gathered in Tahrir Square to mark the event that led to the toppling of former President Hosni Mubarak. Despite a significant decrease in the quantity of human rights abuses and the very significant fact that last week Egypt inaugurated its newly elected parliament in which Islamists of various colours took 73% of the vote, the progress is Egypt has been treated with a large degree of scepticism among the western media media and NGOs. The primary reason for this is of course the apparent endurance of repressive rule by the army which has continued some of the practices of the prior regime. Read Full Post »

Article 2(4) of the UN Charter as supplemented by Article 51 provides strict limits on the state’s right to use force. However, it is unclear whether Article 2(4) also prohibits transnational armed groups from using force. Therefore, the question whether violent acts by transnational armed groups can be categorised as armed attacks within the meaning of the UN Charter has implications for how states are permitted to respond to violent acts by transnational armed groups and for the extent to which International Humanitarian Law regulates these acts. This post will examine whether violent acts by transnational armed groups can be classified as an armed attack under the UN Charter and thereby prohibited under International Law.

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Developments in recent weeks once more highlight the under-appreciated complexity of the relationship between human rights organisations, democratising regimes and processes of international accountability. On Monday last, Egyptian civil rights lawyers demanded the death penalty for former President Hosni Mubarak on Monday, joining prosecutor’s calls for him to be executed. On the other hand, a coalitions of international NGOs (the Open Society Justice Initiative, International Commission of Jurists, Lawyers without Borders, Canada, the International Center for Transitional Justice) attempted to stimulate a reluctant Haitian government in Port-au-Prince to prosecute its former dictator, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier for crimes against humanity through an amicus curiae brief to the national prosecutor laying out the basis for prosecution under international law, arguing that the case is not covered by a local statute of limitations. Read Full Post »

In December of  2009 we discussed on the blog the announcement that Ireland was to take over the Chair of the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE) in 2012. The OSCE is a regional European security body that has over 56 participating states including members in Europe, Central Asia and North America such as the United States, the UK, the Holy See, France, Russia and Canada. Ireland joined the organisation as an original member in 1973, though the organisation in its current form emerged in 1994 in the post Cold War era.  Its work covers areas such as arms control, anti-trafficking, combating terrorism, conflict prevention, democratisation, elections, gender equality, minority rights, policing, rule of law, tolerance and non-discrimination.

Since the announcement the OSCE has undergone the Chairship of Lithuania and Kazakhstan, the latter having been an extremely controversial choice given its human rights record. Indeed quite a number of human rights organisations have been critical of both the choice and the lack of reform in Kazakhstan following and during its tenure. Indeed Amnesty International 2011 Report on Kazakhstan states that,

Reports of torture or other ill-treatment remained widespread, despite government promises to adopt a zero tolerance policy toward its practice. Impunity for such human rights violations persisted. The authorities stepped up efforts to forcibly return asylum-seekers and refugees to China and Uzbekistan under national security and counter-terrorism measures.

Given, what many argued was an ill-considered choice of Chair for the OSCE, it is incumbent on the states which followed, Lithuania and now Ireland, to re-establish the OSCE’s reputation, most particularly in the field of human rights. On this note, the Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore presented the priorities for Ireland’s term of as Chair of the organisation. In his address to the Organization, the Tánaiste stressed that Ireland’s priorities would be, 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 »

We are pleased to publish this guest post from Stephen Coutts, a researcher at the European University Institute. Stephen is a graduate of University College Cork and the College of Europe (Bruges). His doctoral research focusses on the relationship between EU citizenship and the area of freedom, security and justice in the EU. Stephen is the EU Correspondent for the Irish Yearbook of International Law.

Handed down on the 21^st of December by the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice, Ziolkowski is the latest in a series of cases clarifying and refining the right of permanent residence contained in Directive 2004/38 (the Citizenship Directive). Following cases C-325/09 Dias and C-169/09 Laval,  Ziolkowski addresses the requirement of five years prior legal residence and specifically whether periods of residence under national law, 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.

Last Wednesday, the European Court of Justice issued a flurry of judgments just before the Christmas break. Indeed, there were so many interesting and important decisions amongst the twenty or so handed down that seems foolish to consider any of them the ‘most important’. Nonetheless the judgment in NS and Others v SSHD (C-411/10) must be a contender for the title. The case concerns an asylum seeker in Britain who first entered the EU through Greece. The Dublin Regulation, which governs this aspect of EU asylum law, would ordinarily dictate that the applicant should be sent to Greece to have his asylum claim considered there. However, Mr Saeedi challenged his transfer to Greece, claiming that his human rights would be infringed by such a transfer as Greece would be unable to process his application. NS was joined with an Irish case, ME & Others v Refugee Applications Commissioner & MEJLR (C-493/10), which raised similar questions for EU law. Read Full Post »

One could be forgiven, amidst the furore over the European Court of Human Rights’ Al-Khawaja judgment last Thursday, for missing the first report of the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation on the operation of the Terrorist Asset-Freezing etc Act 2010. The Report runs to over 100 pages and is the most comprehensive account of UK terrorist asset freezing in print. It is the third report of the current Independent Reviewer, David Anderson Q.C., since he took up the post in February. Asset freezing is something of a speciality of his, as he has appeared in litigation in both EU and UK courts on the matter. It is therefore unsurprising that the Report exhibits the same attention to detail that made Anderson’s previous two efforts essential reading. Read Full Post »