Human Rights Commissions can redress the balance
BY ROISIN DE ROSA
The Human Rights Commission will be as good as it is accessible
to those who don't even dream that they have a right.
- Inez
McCormack
| |
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.''
d 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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