Human Rights

The Good Friday Agreement 1998 conferred an obligation on both the British and Irish Governments to establish a Human Rights Commission in each jurisdiction, This took a couple of years to implement.

Although the UK Human Rights Act was passed in 1998 it did not come into effect until 2nd October 2000 and the ECHR was incorporated into Irish law on 1st January 2004 (ref European Convention on Human Rights Act 2003).

It is interesting to note that whilst Ireland was one of the first states to sign the ECHR in 1953 it was the last state to (partially) incorporate the provisions of the ECHR into domestic law.

The Good Friday Agreement also made provision for the establishment of a Joint Committee comprising members of the NI HR Commission and the HR Commission of the Republic of Ireland. This Committee meets alternately in Dublin and Belfast to discuss issues such as migration and racism.

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Most scholars consider the Magna Charta (Latin for “Great Charter”), signed in England in 1215, to be the forerunner of the legal guarantees which exist today. King John of England, under heavy pressure from rebellious nobles, granted all English freemen certain rights “to be had and holden by them and their heirs…for ever.” At that time in history very few people in England were actually regarded as freemen, but it was a step in the right direction. Before the Magna Charta, any provisions for human rights were at the behest of the occasional benign ruler of the land.

More often than not rulers were prone to oppress their peoples using arbitrary authority that was only challenged when others wanted to seize the same powers for themselves. Efforts by peasants to win more economic freedom were ruthlessly suppressed. To this day in many lands, persons openly critical of government policy find themselves jailed or executed.

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