TWENTY-SIX years on from the signing of the Good Friday Agreement and those involved in discussions around constitutional change face “varying degrees of flak, harassment and intimidation”, one of the North's leading human rights advocates has said.
Daniel Holder, the Director of the Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ), made the claim at a panel discussion in Belfast today.
Although organised by Sinn Féin, Chairperson Ailbhe Smyth – a long-time feminist and founding head of Women’s and Gender Studies at University College Dublin – began by stressing her own independence and that of the other speakers on the panel.
The St Comgall’s debate is the 13th such engagement that Sinn Féin has organised as part of its Commission On The Future Of Ireland series with Rights In A New Ireland in the spotlight.
CAJ’s Daniel Holder said that this week had been particularly difficult when it came to the erosion of human rights; starting as it did with the British government interning refugees in camps as part of its Rwanda policy, then running down the clock on legacy cases, before finally closing them down entirely.
“Do we live in a rights-based society? Yes, we do have some rights, but they are very much under threat,” he added.
Answering the same question, Professor Colin Harvey from Queen’s University was blunt with his answer. “No,” he said.
“We have an unequal society, we have an unjust society, and we have an unfair society" when it comes to socio-economic issues.
CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGE: Dr Shannonbrooke Murphy
Professor Harvey said that progress has been made in recent years, “but let’s be honest,” he added, “so much of the last 15 years has been about trying to hold on to what we already have.” He said that in the North of Ireland people are trying to build a better society for everyone but “the tool box is half empty”.
Dr Shannonbrooke Murphy, Professor in Human Rights at St Thomas University in New Brunswick, Canada, told the audience that a human rights-based society – that those who came before us had succeeded in making gains towards – is now under threat.
She said that constitutional change in Ireland “will afford us the opportunity to put human rights at the very centre of the new constitutional order. Such opportunities are rare indeed.”
Earlier, Sinn Fein MLA Declan Kearney, who is chairperson of the party's Commission On The Future of Ireland, said that a new constitutional settlement in Ireland would achieve a rights-based society and criticised the British government's breaches of the human rights aspect of the Good Friday Agreement.
