8 February 2001 Edition

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Human Rights Commissions can redress the balance

BY ROISIN DE ROSA


 
A pathbreaking conference to discuss the powers and potential of the Human Rights Commissions (HRCs) was held last Saturday, 3 February, in Dublin, organised by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL).

After 30 years of struggle, through the Good Friday Agreement both governments made commitments to establish Human Rights Commissions which have, at least on paper, very significant powers to protect human rights and ensure conformity with international standards.

The HRCs can advise and recommend to governments, review existing and draft legislation, conduct investigations, educate to promote awareness of human rights, and bring proceedings involving the protection of human rights. They are mandated to establish a joint committee to draw up an all-Ireland Charter of Human Rights. It is an agenda of huge potential.

The injustices perpetrated daily against the disadvantaged, for all these people, and many more, the HRC appears to hold out the promise for redress against the arrogance of power.

Dublin delays


Justice Donal Barrington, President Designate of the 26-County Human Rights Commission, reviewed the powers outlined by the Dublin Government on paper for the HRC. Unlike the body set up by the British Government in March 1999, Dublin has still not established its commission.

Minister John O'Donoghue set up a committee to propose members and then, several months later, largely ignored their proposals. The NGOs complained loudly and the minister acknowledged his mistake, conceding further appointments from the selected lists. ``Unless the commission is independent of government, and adequately funded, it is redundant, and I want no part of it,'' said Justice Barrington

The Chief Commissioner of the Six-County HRC, Bryce Dickson, pointed out that the British government had refused the commission power to compel evidence, but there was the added provision that the HRC report to the Secretary of State, after their first two years in operation on whether their powers are adequate. ``We exist,'' he said, ``to snap at the heels of government.''

Priorities


At the conference, Michael Farrell, a member designate of the 26-County commission, said he wanted ``a people's commission, a voice for the marginalised, the oppressed in our society''. He hoped to focus on ``combating racism, on Travellers who are spurned and abused, and forced to live in Third World conditions, and on the mentally ill''. He also prioritised the Emergency Powers Act, the two-tier judicial system (the Special Criminal Court) that was condemned by the UN Human Rights Committee as far back as 1993, as unjustifiable.

He said the commission should hold its own inquiry into the Special Powers Act. The government set up a committee in the summer of 1999 to carry out a `wide-ranging review' of the Offences Against the State Acts, under Supreme Court Judge Anthony Hederman, which had still not reported.

``Huge steps need to be taken'' he said, ``before we reach equality of rights on gender issues.'' The importance of this agenda was stressed by Ursula Barry, a founder member of the Women's Human Rights Network, one of the proposed members of the commission whom Minister O'Donoghue chose to reject.

The HRC should ``get the state out of our lives'', she said. ``Only 27% of people in the state live in mixed sexual partnerships with kids, yet the state has long ignored the human rights of those who don't.''

Noeleen Blackwell, a solicitor who has worked on many asylum-seeker cases, talked of the 124 people denied access to boats at Cherbourg and the 39 people refused permission to land at Rosslare, people denied their human right to apply for asylum, by Irish Ferries staff, `advised' by Gardaí who have no jurisdiction. She expressed the hope that the HRC offers an opening for redress.

Martin Collins, from Pavee Point, also a member-designate of the HRC, focused on enshrining the right to be nomadic for Travellers, who are forced into social conformity often against their culture and wishes.

Donal Toolan, a co-ordinator of the Forum of People with Disabilities and a former member of the Council of State, in a powerful address, talked of the violation of rights of people with disabilities. ``17% of the population have some level of impairment,'' he said. He refered to a published official report which stated the cause of death of many in mental institutions to have been the arbitrary overprescription of drugs.

Social and economic rights


Many speakers talked of the clear need for independence from Government, for funding at least ten times the mentioned £1.25 million. They talked of the need for accountability, transparency and above all, accessibility. Inez McCormack, ICTU President and a member of the Six-County HRC, as always incisive, said: ``The HRC will be as good as it is accessible, and I don't mean accessible to the people in this room, but to those who don't even dream that they have a right.''

And many spoke of the need to develop a human rights culture in Ireland, where rights are denied without complaint or protest. ``There needs to be a cultural change, and a change in the relationship of power to those who are most vulnerable. That power treats those who are most vulnerable with respect. Power is asked to have manners,'' she said.

Many speakers talked of their fears that the HRCs will not be able to live up to their prescripted powers to change things. ``There must be no pussyfooting'' on social economic rights saidDonncha O'Connell. Donal Toolan, Ursula Barry and Justice Barrington also focused on this as the core of human rights. ``It is the deepening economic inequality that accounts for the violation of human rights. You live and die in this country because you cannot afford to jump the queue,'' said Toolan.

``Human rights is the most fundamental challenge to consumerism, and the demented influence of capitalism and corporations on our lives. It is this that creates the absolute violation of human rights, when people become indifferent to their denial. I encounter the reality of that absence.''

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