European Court of Human Rights

Human Rights under threat

Paul Gosling on May 8, 2023, 9:00 am | Readers 2265

Human rights are under threat in the UK, warns the Northern Ireland Human Rights Chief Commissioner Alyson Kilpatrick. While the immediate question is whether the British government will change the law in order to remove large numbers of asylum seekers to Rwanda, this is in the context of proposals for the UK to leave the European Convention on Human Rights. This would have significant, negative, implications for Northern Ireland, given that this is one of the foundations of the Good …

Has a human rights culture gone too far? The subject of this year’s BBC Reith Lectures

Brian Walker on June 4, 2019, 9:32 pm | Readers 2614

Lord Sumption On what authority do we create “a rights based society”? Is everything we call rights, actually rights or just preferences? Who arbitrates between competing rights? In what way are rights superior to ordinary law? These are basic questions which lie behind the claim often made in Northern Ireland that all rights are beyond legitimate dispute. They also lie at the heart of this year’s series of BBC Reith Lectures being given by Jonathan Sumption, a recently retired Supreme …

New British Bill of Rights would alter the Good Friday Agreement

Brian Walker on May 12, 2015, 10:38 am | Readers 2551

The new Conservative government appears to be moving fast to enact a new British Bill of Rights to replace the Human Rights Act of 1998 which is one of the cornerstones of the Good Friday Agreement. Tory dislike of the HRA has nothing to do with the Agreement. Indeed as so often happens, Northern Ireland doesn’t figure in their thoughts. The Conservatives are targeting decisions of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg which in their view makes it too …

The sad tale of tolerating torture that hangs over us today

Brian Walker on October 29, 2012, 10:05 am | Readers 112

Ian Cobain a senior reporter on the Guardian is on Radio 4’s Start the Week ( listen on BBCiPlayer or RadioPlayer after 10 a.m. or the repeat at 2100 live tonight). I strongly recommend a listen. The author of Cruel Britannia: a secret history of British torture, he gives a calm and convincing account of how torture techniques were introduced in the colonies after WW2 and applied at the beginning of internment in Northern Ireland in 1971. . Cobain is …