Wednesday, November 22, 2006
NIHRC: Has it delivered? Can it deliver?
The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission was formally established in 1999 under the terms of the Belfast Agreement. Since then it has recieved over £6m of public funding. However, with over six years of work and millions of investment what do Sluggerites think it has achieved? The balance of both Commissions has been criticised and the first became disfunctional over the Ardoyne Road/Holy Cross dispute. They took advise to mean “write” the Bill of Rights but its work ran completely into the sand or as it describes it:
“The Commision has found it difficult to achieve a political consensus on what should constitute a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland and is currently deliberating on the nature and content of its advice to government.”
Now in the St Andrews Agreement Government plans to increase its powers over the citizenry. Is it not an approriate time to ask:
1. What tangible on the ground impact has NIHRC made?
2. If the NIHRC hadn’t existed, what, if anything, would be different today?
3. Could the £6m invested differently have done more to promote a human rights culture than the NIHRC?
Fair Deal @ 02:05 PM
The “waste of money” line does not explain why Unionists are opposed to the idea of a NIHRC and Nationalists aren’t. The sectarian parties in general are all for “more money and resources” for everything provided Britain pays for it.
I think the reason is more genuinely cultural. NI Protestants in general have grown up in a British culture, where they feel (within reason) they can trust the state to protect their rights and, also, that the political culture of that state is one of “evolution not revolution”.
NI Catholics, however, have grown up broadly unable to trust the state, and feel they need a specific document which outlines how their rights are to be protected.
That is why I feel we’ve been starting at the wrong end of the debate. We need to consider what is possible in UK law, and how we are already protected under EU-led convention. It may genuinely be all the answers we need are already contained in those.
Posted by on Nov 23, 2006 @ 01:13 AMIJP, final paragraph sums it all up, why o why is N.I. always the special case, the kids gloves treatment. If any Human Rights abuses are occurring then why do N.I. need a HRC to help out with prosecutions? why cant the just do what people in England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and the rest of the EU do? oh I forgot your all sooo special.
Does no one worry that this overarching need to adddress problems in a special way helps to perpuate the entranched mindset that everything in NI is special and needs special help to get anyhting done. The process should be normalisition not replacing one type of special treatment with another.
In terms of equality and rights rights the biggest tool you could use was handed to you on a plate by the EU, if your average jailbird can sue the government for not get free drugs in jail why does NI (with all it’s rampant Human Rights abuses according to some) need a special commission. Slow learners or something?
A previous poster noted that “perhaps you might wish to receive health care if you get ill, to be able to live independently, to have a home, not to be arbitrarily sacked without compensation from the job you held for 20 years, to have the right to enter Fulton’s Fine Furnishings and cast your eyes over the stock, etc, etc. Those are the kinds of things that Human Rights are about”
To my mind the first 4 on that list have nothing to do with human rights. It’s a great example of rights creep. The are all very nice to have but no one has a right to them, where do people think these come from, the housing fairy? the NHS fairy? oh I forgot they were dreamt up by someone who is employed by the government, aka the wage fairy. They are not fundamental to the human condition, nice to have but not an inalieanable right.
The last one, depends on why your not allowed in the shop.
Posted by on Nov 23, 2006 @ 01:48 PMAnimus
“I don’t know of anyone who thinks rights are a wishlist. No one.”
Then you need to get out more. I suggest you examine the earlier human rights agreements and then the most recent ones. Look at the growth in the range of groups that are covered by such things. For example rural groups are now looking section 75 protection.
The positive rights field (a necessary expansion beyond negative rights) has become the adoption of wishlists. Take for example this:
http://www.linguistic-declaration.org/decl-gb.htm
Compare it with the existing protections for langauge communities. IMO that fits the category of rights becoming wishlists.“Brice Dickson was under fire for not being a proper Prod by many people, including many unionists”
Is Brice Dickson not a Humanist? Do you have any statements to prove this claim? BD’s problem was he was a client of the local human rights community who was much better suited to academia than dealing with a political hot potato.
“Most unionists refused to sit at a roundtable set up at the Assembly to talk about rights either, that was hardly the fault of the Commission.”
Nice rewriting of history. The NIHRC decided its job was to write the act and it should be maximalist. They did so with no consultation and the decision was taken by an imbalanced commission. They behave in a high handed, arrogant and unrepresentative manner but is the politicians fault for then not engaging. Hmmmmm.
“If it were to get buy-in from Northern Ireland at large, they should have sent the results of the first series of working group reports and consultations and be done with it.”
A good suggestion. Although I would add that they needed to have supplemented the work groups work with an examination of the issues around maximalism and minimalist approaches.
Alan
“I’ll assume that you are not suggesting that you don’t have a wishlist.”
Not particularly, better a minimalist act that can be enforced properly than combined wish-lists that will see us all sitting in courts for the next ten years with judges making ever more resource decisions that much better the purview of politicians.
I much prefer to rely upon the strength of argument and the democratic and political process to deliver wishlists. If I am the losing side of the argument about the nature of the Act then I will look again.
IJP
“We need to consider what is possible in UK law, and how we are already protected under EU-led convention”
Could you expand what you mean by that I may put up athird thread on the NIHRC
Posted by on Nov 23, 2006 @ 02:01 PM
