Republican News · Thursday 26 June 2003

ger at Dublin's minimalist approach to human rights

Following passage of the European Convention on Human Rights Bill last week, Sinn Féin Dáil spokesperson on Justice, Equality, and Human Rights, Aengus Ó Snodaigh, expressed growing consternation over the Minister for Justice's self-declared war on a rights-based society. Ó Snodaigh particularly criticised McDowell's minimalist approach to the government's implementation of the equality and human rights aspects of the Good Friday Agreement.

Effective incorporation of the ECHR is an act of completion specifically mandated by the Good Friday Agreement under Rights, Safeguards and Equality of Opportunity. It states that the government will "bring forward measures to strengthen and underpin the constitutional protection of human rights" including incorporation of the ECHR. It also commits the government to "ensure at least an equivalent level of protection of human rights as will pertain" in the North.

"With great reluctance - and unanimously with all the other opposition parties - the Sinn Féin deputies voted against the European Convention on Human Rights Bill tabled by this government," he said. " We did so following vigorous and unified opposition attempts to remedy the Bill's major deficiencies, about which there was consensus not only among the opposition parties but also within the human rights sector in this state. Ultimately, we used our vote to underline our belief that the government's approach was unnecessarily minimalist and seriously flawed. We also used it to draw a line in the sand with this Minister for Justice in his self-declared war on a rights-based society.

"Make no mistake. Sinn Féin wants the European Convention on Human Rights properly incorporated into law, and we fought for it to be included among the Good Friday Agreement provisions. But we cannot abide the minimising of the Agreement's equality and human rights provisions by any party - no matter whether it is the unionists, the British government or this state.

"The government's flawed ECHR Bill is just a single instance of an emerging pattern of denial and erosion of the principles of human and equality rights in this state - in particular since this Justice Minister took office. The reality is that this government is systematically undermining the rights-based approach to politics that was enshrined in the Good Friday Agreement and endorsed by the vast majority of people on this island.

"And make no mistake. In insisting on passing a minimalist Bill, the Dublin government has substantively failed to live up to their own commitments under the Good Friday Agreement."