Rights NI is delighted to welcome this guest post from Christopher Stanley. Christopher Stanley is Legal Officer with Rights Watch (UK) and can be reached at cstanley@rwuk.org

The post considers the significance of on-going events involving protests regarding flags in Belfast, Northern Ireland and the relationship to the post Belfast/Good Friday Agreement 15 year anniversary.

It is not about the flag above a city hall.  Flags are the symbol of a national identity, often an identity which is contested.  That is simple enough to understand but it is the cause of the reaction, its rootedness in a community, a reaction often marked by violence toward the emblem or to protect the emblem which requires excavation for a meaning. This real violence toward or in defence of a symbolic device is a portrayal of a deep seated anger expressed through a sense of disgusted betrayal.  It is a reflection of the deep fissures remaining, and increasingly exposed, on the 15^th anniversary of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement, when the victors appear to be narrow self-interested political elite squatting in Stormont and those either side of the sectarian divide see small progress after the hard won peace and sacrifices taken by both; the first generations after the peace, and therefore remote from the peace are now taking to the streets in echoes of civil disturbances from the late 1960s.  And this public demonstration of uncharacteristic Loyalist disorder takes place against continuing dissident Republican violent political action against the officers of the state; the dissident Republicans are obviously dialectically opposed to the process of peace, truth and reconciliation but they are a dangerous presence in Northern Ireland; the disenfranchised Loyalist youth are an equal presence and their actions must be understood.

The recent and continuing violent demonstrations by Loyalist youth is connected to both old and modern histories, but not expressed against the old adversary with a Green Head, a copy of Das Kapital and a Rosary, but against a betrayal by the Sovereign State.  And this week it will take place against the global glare of the world as represented by the G8. It is as if the peace walls –  the interfaces – between glowering masked-faces which maintain the sectarian divide in Belfast and are there because both sides of the community want them despite calls by politicians for their removal demonstrating political progress or by good meaning humanitarians who view them as symbols of still entrenched divisions, – it is as if these peace walls, are no longer the point of division but symbolise an internal social chaos and political discord  within different societies. This is why the issue of flags, atop the shared public spaces of alleged political engagement, is the issue because they are emblematic of a state which has failed to deliver and which was itself a party in conflict now inefficiently concluded but not closed.

“And it had no love for England.  It was quite alone; it owed no allegiance to anyone but itself and the grim God it had fashioned in its own likeness.  England was a convenience; England existed to see that no Catholic Irish Parliament ever controlled affairs in Ulster; and at all times when such control seemed unlikely, the Ulsterman was a convinced and stubborn radical who, at least the least sign of interference from England turned angry and rebellious.” (Dangerfield G., The Strange Death of Liberal England, (New York: Perigee Books, 1961) page 77)

Those who were Loyal to the British state have two demands, or needs: to protect their Mother Ulster (as opposed to Mother Ireland) and to protect their history.  It may be (but probably is not) as simple as that.  It is not now a question of Sovereignty but rather the ancient allegiance to a tarnished crown above the common politics of a cheapened unionism.  The crooked deal brokered in 1998 behind closed doors between non-speaking parties (wearing masks), between adversaries who never met, became an unholy bargain between a political elite of egos who shared the few spoils that became available in a power sharing executive.  From the Loyalist perspective, the Loyalists were thrown a very meagre bone that their Ulster within the Union was safe for the time being and their glorious history was secure despite the obvious capitulation to the demands of the enemy.

But the failure to attest sufficiently to history in the fifteen years since the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement has become one element of the toxicity which undermines this false peace symbolised in a protest about flags and football, and a Loyalist community wanting to confront its history on its own terms and now recognising that the English perpetrators, the co-conspirators (co-combatants in the non-war of a local troublesome civil disturbance), scuttled down the pipe back to Westminster and left them to their fate as soon as decent under the guise of devolution, throwing key powers into a political vacuum, save when Westminster thinks appropriate to maintain the grip of it gnarled Lions paw over The Province in the interests of un-defined national security or to test anti-civil constraint techniques against the entrenched suspect communities of Ulster: prolonged pre-trial detention at the Antrim Serious Crime Suite, stop and search again and again , uncorroborated accomplice evidence, the long vanquished jury trial in certified terrorist related prosecutions, the deployment of drones both covert and overt, allegations of witness intimidation, controversy over allegedly differential bail decisions and so and so forth in a sad repeat of toxic histories.

The disconnected youth who have inherited the legacy of the Loyalist past and are the first generation after the peace to reap the fall out, have the stories their ancestors tell but without the satisfaction that their Ulster means anything or their history has been protected.  They are left with even leaner pickings from that meagre bone.  Their ancestors took part in the conflict and assisted the English state in its struggle to avoid the war and maintain the Rule of Law in a colonial province of old plantations, brave settlers with their grim God.

Their God is dead.  The English have gone home.  The spoils of history went to the nationalist Republicans in league with their own tight lipped political leaders and they are left with bitterness and a dispute about flags and deserving of something more in this bleak future.

As Northern Ireland continues its regress from the peace brokered 15 years ago and  in the absence of determined political leadership and political will, in the absence of sustained economic commitment and with the reliance upon fractured communities and a hard pressed range of civil society organisations expected increasingly to deliver the promises and  the dividends of peace, the human rights precepts which were supposed to shape and underpin the peace (including delivering a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland) and which would have contributed to the consolidation of peace after violent civil conflict,  are waning as a flickering candle in the contested space of chapel whilst violence return to the streets.  It is now – at the end of politics in Northern Ireland – that human rights are most needed within the communities that now must make the state of the peace.

And it is because there is a need for human rights in Northern Ireland, with a public service commitment to equality of opportunity under section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act, and the development of a now mature grassroots lead civil society, wherein lies a hope in this 15 Anniversary after the Belfast/GFA (and the Omagh Bombing).  It is hoped it is not too late and that the burden upon forces outwith of politics can push through the barricades between the protesters and the uneasy officers of authority tasked to take to the streets again with water cannon and API – and drones.  For now it is less the interface marking the segregated sectarian divide but the struggle with the retreating state in this regard where there is no political will to move forward to secure human rights based peace founded upon justice through accountability. This is why there is an awkward unity across the sectarian divide about the failing state in Northern Ireland and why the protests about flags in the forthcoming shadow of the worlds gaze means so much more, but also provokes a serious engagement with the Loyalists of Mother Ulster reclaiming their political space through a contest with the state, in a demonstration of flagging up-rights.

RightsNI is delighted to welcome this guest post by Liz Griffith, elizabeth.griffith@lawcentreni.org.

Refugee Action Group invites all Rights NI readers to a ‘Stop Deportations’ workshop on the afternoon of Friday 14^th June.

Deportation gives rise to so many human rights issues that it is hard to know where to start.  In theory, the UK cannot lawfully deport someone to a country where there is a risk of serious harm, torture or death. In practice, however, the asylum process is as such that some protection issues remain unheard, unresolved or ignored. Deportation also tears individuals and their children away from their friends, schools and communities. We must also remember that deportation is a lucrative business for private security companies and that there are substantiated accounts of harm (and indeed death) of deportees while ‘under escort’ (E.g. Medical Justice, ‘Outsourcing abuse: the use and misuse of state-sanctioned force during the detention and removal of asylum seekers’ (2008) http://www.medicaljustice.org.uk/images/stories/reports/outsourcing%20abuse.pdf  See also news reports following the death of Jimmy Mubenga in 2010).

Of course, deportation often goes hand in hand with immigration detention. The number of detention beds in the UK now tops 4000 and is rising. About 30,000 people are detained each year- for days, weeks, months or years (See briefing papers posted regularly here:  http://www.aviddetention.org.uk/). Just a fortnight ago, the UN Committee against Torture criticised the UK for its detention policy; specifically, it highlighted the fact that there is no time limit on immigration incarceration, which amounts to de facto indefinite detention. (It also rebuked the UK for its attempts to deport Sri Lankan Tamils despite evidence of torture) (Concluding observations on the fifth periodic report of the United Kingdom, adopted by the Committee at its fiftieth session (6-31 May 2013) documents at http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cat/cats50.htm).

For these reasons, and many others aside, Refugee Action Group hopes as many people as possible will come and learn skills in campaigning against deportation.

The workshop is delivered by Lisa and Michael from the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns (NCADC). NCADC supports community campaigns for justice in the immigration and asylum systems and supports people fighting for their right to remain in the UK. Lisa and Michael are coming to Belfast to share their vast experience of successful anti-deportation campaigns.  Underpinning their work are principles of human rights, peace and human dignity.

The workshop is very interactive and packed full with useful tips and ideas. It is free, however, please commit to attending the full afternoon session.

Everyone is welcome: refugees, students, asylum seekers, human rights activists, migrants, concerned residents… and anyone else!

Where:             LORAG/Shaftesbury Community & Rec. Centre, 97 Balfour Ave, Belfast

When:              Friday 14^th June 2013

Join us for lunch at 1pm. Workshop takes place 1.30 – 4.30pm

RSVP:             Let us know you are coming by Tuesday 11^th June and tell us of any access or dietary requirements: elizabeth.griffith@lawcentreni.org

Find out more here: www.ncadc.org.uk …and read the NCADC toolkit too!

 Fifteen years ago today people in Northern Ireland took to the polls to vote in the Good Friday Agreement referendum. From an exceptionally high voter turn-out of 81.1% a resounding 71.1% voted in favour of the Agreement, with all of its provisions.

The Agreement was firmly anchored in human rights and equality and a key element in the realisation of a fairer society was a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland, which was to be enacted through Westminster legislation.

Fifteen years later many successes have been achieved, but we still do not have a Bill of Rights. The UK government uses a lack of political consensus in Northern Ireland as an excuse, when in reality they have done very little to achieve accord. It is time for the UK government to show leadership on this issue.

To mark today’s important anniversary a group of civil society organisations have published an open letter calling on the UK Government to advance the long-overdue Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland.
Fiona McCausland, chairperson of the Human Rights Consortium, said:
“When the public voted for the agreement 15 years ago today, they voted for all of the agreement, not just part of it. Human rights are part of the normal checks and balances of any healthy democracy. In a society that has come through so much and still remains divided they become all the more important. “

The letter is reproduced below.

22nd May 2013

Dear Editor,

Fifteen years ago today the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement was overwhelmingly approved by a referendum of the people.

It heralded the beginning of the end to conflict and a start to a new society in Northern Ireland.

There have been many positive developments since that day, but the full promise of the Agreement has yet to be delivered.

As with many societies emerging from conflict, a Bill of Rights was part of Northern Ireland’s peace agreement.

This Bill of Rights was intended, via Westminster legislation, to help secure the peace by protecting the rights of everyone.

As events in Northern Ireland continue to show, the need to build a just and peaceful society is as important as ever.

Fifteen years on, the UK government has still not fully implemented the Agreement.

It has still not legislated for the Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland.

We call on the UK Government to secure the peace, deliver on its Agreement commitments and legislate for a Northern Ireland Bill of Rights.

Regards,

Age NI

Amnesty International

Children’s Law Centre

Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ)

Disability Action

Disabled Police Officers Association

Human Rights Consortium

Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU)

The National Union of Students-Union of Students in Ireland (NUS-USI)

North-West Community Network

Northern Ireland Council for Ethnic Minorities (NICEM)

Northern Ireland Public Service Alliance (NIPSA)

Relatives For Justice

Rural Community Network

Save the Children

UNISON

Unite the Union

WAVE Trauma Centre

Women’s Aid Federation Northern Ireland

The Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ) published a report in late 2012 entitled “The Policing You Don’t See”. It highlighted the ‘parallel justice system’ currently operating in Northern Ireland. This consists of a police force accountable to local mechanisms and another “force outside a force” responsible for national security issues, operating from within the Security Service (MI5) in London.[1]

In order to decipher precisely which actions MI5 is to be held legally accountable for, it is important that the meaning of ‘national security’ in international law is clarified. The national security doctrine is notoriously elusive and its definition has been debated for centuries. This post will briefly summarise the points from a longer essay submitted to the Irish Centre for Human Rights in May 2013.[2] It will illustrate the broad interpretative scope of the national security doctrine in the United States of America (‘the US’), the United Kingdom (‘the UK’) and Turkey. It will be shown that the European Union (EU) and other international bodies, including the United Nations (UN), have spoken out on the need to clarify the national security doctrine for the purposes of safeguarding human rights. Judgments in the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) confirm this sentiment. It appears contrary to current international thinking on the issue that the UK has recently legislated for so-called ‘secret courts’, which relies on the obscurity of ‘national security issues’. It is hoped that this discussion might contribute to clarifying the interface between domestic counter-terrorism strategy and international human rights protections.

From the academic debate on its definition, two elements of national security can be drawn out. First, in the context of military defence, several academics[3] have highlighted the importance of territorial sovereignty – as monitored internally within a state’s jurisdiction and externally, beyond the state’s borders. The modern etymology of the phrase dates to the US Senate in August 1945 when Navy Secretary James Forestall spoke about military preparedness in the shadow of the Second World War. The other element that presents itself in the academic writings is the protection of democratic constitutional values. As will be seen in states’ interpretations, national security has been construed so as to include political and economic ‘interests’ (another ambiguous term) – not only domestically, but worldwide.

The definition currently employed by the Obama Administration entails the seemingly unlimited promotion of US interests “around the globe”.[4] Worryingly, it even goes so far as to explicitly mention as a priority for US national security the protection of the ‘interests’ of “its allies”.[5] The US could therefore justify limiting an individual’s human rights if, for example, the constitutional values of “its ally” were deemed to be threatened. The broad scope of such an interpretation is a cause for concern for international human rights law.

The UK government interprets its ‘interests’ as ensuring its international political and economic influence. Notably, the UK cites national security interests as the primary obligation of government.[6] This seems to prioritise state interests over its citizens’ rights (despite international human rights obligations to the contrary).

Hale Akay has labelled Turkey a “security state” that has assigned itself “supreme rights”.[7] For the national security doctrine, the problem lies with the subjective definitions of nationhood, existence and – most obscure of all – “interests”. Akay has highlighted the increasing militarisation of Turkey and warns that the national security doctrine “must be redefined clearly, unequivocally” so as to avoid “further expansion of the military into the civilian sphere”.[8]

The European Union has directed that all state parties’ national security interests are subsidiary to the security of “the Union as a whole”. This does not provide much information as to the definition of what that such security protects, but there have been more useful statements from international bodies, such as the NGO, Article 19. According to Article 19’s Johannesburg Principles, states are justified in combating threats either within the state (internal) or those coming from outside the jurisdiction (external). Significantly, the Principles highlight as relevant both the intent with which the threat to national security was made and the likelihood of that threat materialising. This suggests that where the likelihood is low that a national security interest is threatened, the state will not be justified in limiting individual rights. Therefore, governments must balance the protection of their interests with the intent and likelihood that its ‘national security’ will be threatened. Admittedly, this assessment is a delicate balance, but it serves to rein in states’ powers to limit the rights of individuals who are deemed to constitute a threat. This sentiment appears to be a general consensus at the international level, with the relevant UN Special Rapporteur announcing in 2012 that states must clearly define their interests so as to avoid unnecessary limitations of human rights.[9]

A chronological approach to ECtHR jurisprudence shows a common theme of the national security doctrine. Due to the tendency of political and economic interests to alter over time, a definition of national security interests is probably unattainable. However, since the case of Leander [1987], the ECtHR has ruled time and time again that the determination of national security threats must not be arbitrary. Most recently, the ECtHR held that determinations of national security threats must be subjected to “meaningful judicial scrutiny” whereby such determinations can be challenged by the individuals affected before an independent review body.[10] Threats to national security must therefore be demonstrable and individuals whose rights have been limited for national security reasons should be able to challenge this reasoning. Otherwise, there is no limit on the state’s power to restrict the rights of those who challenge its hegemony.

In spite of these Strasbourg judgments, the UK has just introduced the Justice and Security Act 2013, which widens the scope of so-called ‘secret courts’ in which individuals deemed to constitute a national security threat may be tried without hearing the evidence against them. Instead, security-cleared “special advocates” provided by the state will represent the accused. This legislation exposes the importance to rights protections of defining national security interests. Moreover, it highlights the delicacy of the balance between granting power to a state in order to protect itself and the prevention from state abuse of such power.

Likewise, in order to contain the “force outside a force” and thus prevent MI5 from operating independently of established legal restraints, the UK government must observe the obligations to which it has signed itself up. From the European Union to the United Nations to the European Court of Human Rights, the international community has spoken. For the survival of international law, the necessary next step is for states to listen and act accordingly. In order to set the international example it strives to set, the UK must not abandon its obligations and abuse its power.

The flag protests have largely died out and now the parading season looms. Amid such tensions, it is an apt time to consider the compatibility of Northern Ireland’s peace process with the internationally recognised freedoms of expression and assembly. This blog will address only the flying of a national flag and parading as aspects of cultural identity. Exploration of the 1998 Belfast/Good Friday Agreement (B/GFA) is necessary to better understand cultural identity formation within power-sharing government fifteen years on. This is a summary of a paper submitted to the Irish Centre for Human Rights in May 2013.[1]

Due to the restraints of the current political model – a form of power-sharing known as consociationalism – effective engagement with the electorate by community elites is made difficult. It has been argued that consociationalism forges a “gap” between the electorate and the elected as a result of “an incentive structure that has rewarded political elites who play the nationalist card”.[2] As politicians strive for the security of their own political ambition, voters’ identities are subsumed – and defined – within this political context.[3] It is, of course, important that Stormont ‘remembers’ past cultural tensions so as to prevent future conflict, but it is submitted that power-sharing governance must not exploit cultural tensions for electoral gain.

Consociational governance necessarily entails “the recognition and (to a degree) the institutionalization, of the two major communities as the key political actors”.[4] As a practical way of ensuring post-conflict group representation, community elites have been granted control over policies most affecting their community (so-called “carving up the center”).[5] However, this “primordialist and segragationist logic” serves to uphold the ‘co-dominant’ identities of Nationalist and Unionist as separate and thus maintains ethnic division.[6] It is submitted that such segregation in Northern Ireland could be counter-acted by cultivating a shared public sphere in which culture and religion are celebrated independently of constitutional politics.

LEGALLY PROTECTING CULTURAL IDENTITY

At present, international human rights law does not provide adequate certainty for ‘cultural rights’ to be justiciable (invokable in court). Existing laws may, however, be interpreted to protect cultural practices such as parading and the flying of flags. Arguably, the most useful interpretation is found in the B/GFA, which states that the Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland (BoRNI) should guarantee “freedom from sectarian harassment”. Although this legal concept has not yet been enforced, it has potential to provide a solution in the absence of other appropriate rights mechanisms.

Cultural protections in 2013 do not extend to a right “to have a flag ‘flown for you’, [or] not to have a flag ‘flown at you’.”[7] A prohibition on flags or parading altogether as a means of forcing a shared public sphere could constitute a breach of human rights law if unjustified by one of the limitations under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) – the act of flying a flag may be interpreted as falling under the protection of freedom of expression under article 10 of the ECHR. Article 10(2), however, lays out criteria under which flying a flag may be considered illegitimate: in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety; in the interests of prevention of disorder or crime; or in the interests of protection of the reputation or rights of others.[8] The same limitations apply to parading and public processions in Northern Ireland under article 11(2) ECHR, which provides for freedom of assembly.

EFFECT OF POWER-SHARING ON IDENTITY

Consociational governance has a dual effect: first, it locks groups into “the very identity politics that the society seeks to transcend”;[9] second, it marginalises those in the Others category who do not self-define along those lines. For as long as consociationalism prevents non-denominational governance in the region, it is submitted that politicians will fuel cultural conflict on the streets from behind closed (office) doors. Moreover, without the BoRNI, cultural identity remains ambiguous in law, cultural rights remain non-justiciable, and full human rights protections therefore remain out of reach.

Rather than promoting cultural tolerance, identity politics delineate individuals based on traditional conflicts. When delivering cultural protections, it is vital to recognise that identities evolve; as Tom Nairn put it, “imagined” communities are moulded and influenced over time.[10] Introducing “freedom from sectarian harassment” to Northern Ireland would go some way to remedying cultural tensions using the law. In the community, too, narratives can be “reemphasised” by citizens;[11] paramilitary murals have been resurfaced[12] and leaders have crossed seemingly impenetrable political boundaries.[13]

However petty these ‘achievements’ may seem to some, this is how culture can be depoliticised in the public sphere. Chris McCrudden has said that one of the successes of consociationalism has been the realisation that, for all its woes, “the Northern Ireland state was capable of reform and transformation”.[14] Because identity is the “product of human action and speech”, there is every possibility that a civic public sphere is attainable in which cultural and religious symbolism is depoliticised and celebrated by all citizens alike. If steps are not actively taken to cultivate such a civic public sphere, consociational governance will continue to entrench cultural differences more profoundly and future generations may react violently to extant cultural tensions left simmering below a surface peace.

To achieve a civic public sphere, what is necessary is the depoliticisation of cultural institutions alongside avid promotion of a civic Northern Ireland identity; an identity based on inclusive citizenship rather than romanticised ethno-sectarian nationalism.

[1] Kearney, D., “The compatibility of consociational governance with cultural identity protection” [2013] - Available on request

[2] Hooghe, Liesbet, “Belgium: Hollowing the Center” in Amoretti, Ugo and Bermeo, Nancy (eds.), “Federalism, Unitarism, and Territorial Cleavages”, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 2004

[3] Marjanovic, Maja, “Post-Conflict Democratization and Depoliticizing of Conflicting Identities: Constitutional Transformation in Bosnia and Herzegovina” (2005)

[4] McCrudden, Christopher, “Equality and the Good Friday Agreement: Fifteen Years On” (29/03/2013)

[5] Hooghe, Liesbet, “Belgium: Hollowing the Center” in Amoretti, Ugo and Bermeo, Nancy (eds.), “Federalism, Unitarism, and Territorial Cleavages”, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 2004

[6] Nagle, John, “From Secessionist Mobilization to Substate Nationalism? Assessing the Impact of Consociationalism and Devolution on Irish Nationalism in Northern Ireland”

[7] Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, “Flag Flying: Briefing Paper on Human Rights Compliance and Commission Policy”, February 2011,

[8] http://www.echr.coe.int/NR/rdonlyres/D5CC24A7-DC13-4318-B457-5C9014916D7A/0/Convention_ENG.pdf

[9] Bell, Christine, “Power-sharing and human rights law”, The International Journal of Human Rights (2013) 17:2

[10] Kearney, Richard, “A Post-National Council of Isles: The British-Irish Conflict Reconsidered”  in “The Shape of Europe” (Cambridge), 2006, p. 169

[11] Nagle, John, “Constructing a Shared Public Identity in Divided Societies: Comparing Consociational and Transformationist Perspectives” (2012)

[12] http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-18672651

[13] http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-16777870

[14] McCrudden, Christopher, “Equality and the Good Friday Agreement: Fifteen Years On” (29/03/2013)

The 2013 Sheehy Skeffington School of Human Rights and Social Justice takes place on Saturday 20^th April in Liberty Hall, Dublin (Registration 10.00 am). Bookings are open through  www.SheehySkeffingtonSchool.org (see bookings link on site menu). The School provides an opportunity to discuss, develop and promote human rights as a means to protect human dignity, promote equality and achieve a socially sustainable society

Speakers

Aoife Nolan: Professor of International Human Rights Law, Nottingham University.

Austin O’Carroll: General practitioner, therapist and researcher concerned with health and social inequalities.

Rosemary Cullen Owens: Historian, academic and writer of Smashing Times, A History of the Irish Women’s Suffrage Movement 1889-1922.

John Douglas: Trade Unionist – General Secretary of Mandate trade union and Vice President of ICTU

Donal O’Kelly: Actor and writer renowned for his solo shows Jimmy Joyced, Catalpa, and Cambria  - an account of former slave Frederick Douglas’ journey to Ireland to meet Daniel O’Connell.

Dessie Donnelly: Director (Development) of the Belfast based Participation and the Practice of Rights (PPR) organisation, where he has worked since 2006.

Mariaam Bhatti: Member of the Domestic Workers Action Group, formed by women working in private homes to fight for dignity, recognition and their rights as workers.

Michael Farrell: Senior solicitor with Free Legal Advice Centres. Former co-chair of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties and member of the Irish Human Rights Commission from 2001 to 2011.

Rachel Mullen: Coordinator of Equality and Rights Alliance (ERA), a coalition of civil society groups working together to protect and strengthen the statutory equality and human rights infrastructure.

RightsNI is delighted to welcome this notice from Unchosen. Unchosen raise awareness about human trafficking through the screening of films around the UK and have been doing so since 2008, for more information about Unchosen please visit http://unchosen.org.uk/ 

Unchosen is really pleased to have been invited by Belfast Film Festival to hold 2 film screenings to raise awareness of human trafficking on Sat 13th and Sun 14th April.  The screenings are as follows:

Saturday 13th April, 7pm; topic; sex trafficking.

Films will be x2 shorts: ‘My dream; my reality’ & ‘Echoes’

http://belfastfilmfestival.ticketsolve.com/shows/873491953/events

Sunday 14th April, 3pm: topic: labour exploitation Film will be ‘I am Slave’.

http://belfastfilmfestival.ticketsolve.com/shows/873491954/events

The format is intended to be as follows: film screening followed by panel debate lasting no more than 40 minutes, comprising 3 anti-trafficking professionals.

The venue will be at The Micro cinema , Belfast Film Festival, 23 Donegall street, Belfast, BT1 2FF.

Rathmore Grammar School pupils took the campaign to Stormont in 2006

We could be on the cusp of an historic milestone in global human rights protection. After nearly twenty years of campaigning by Amnesty International supporters and others worldwide, a vote at the United Nations in New York in a few hours’ time will determine if the world is to get an Arms Trade Treaty.

Here is the story of how we got to this point, penned by my colleagues, some of whom will be working right up to the wire this evening in New York to ensure a positive outcome at the UN, for the world.

————-

Sometimes a simple but potentially revolutionary idea can change the world for the better.

But it often takes a crisis to galvanize people to take action.

This was the case two decades ago when the worldwide civil society movement – led by Amnesty International – took on the immense challenge of regulating the global trade in conventional arms.

For many world leaders, the 1991 Gulf War in Iraq drove home the dangers of an international arms trade lacking in adequate checks and balances.

When the dust settled after the conflict that ensued when Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s powerful armed forces invaded neighbouring Kuwait, it was revealed that his country was awash with arms supplied by all five Permanent Members of the United Nations Security Council. Several of them, it emerged, had also armed Iran in the previous decade, fuelling an eight-year war with Iraq that resulted in hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths.

The crisis of legitimacy in the conventional arms trade triggered a paradigm shift, says Brian Wood, Amnesty International’s Head of Arms Control and Human Rights: “It was big series of scandals at the time. The Permanent Five Security Council members and the other major players had no choice but to do something to regain confidence from world opinion.”

Transcending the old idea

Political leaders had already tried in vain in previous decades to rein in the poorly regulated global arms trade.

In 1919, horrified by the slaughter of the First World War, the newly formed League of Nations tried to restrict and reduce international arms transfers of the type that had led to death and destruction on a massive scale during the war.

But those efforts in the 1920s and 1930s to establish a treaty were variously designed on the basis of old colonial rivalries – and soon collapsed. Countries with empires and ambitions returned to massive re-arming through production and transfers, leading to another catastrophic global war that erupted in 1939.

In the wake of the Second World War’s atrocities and loss of life on a scale never before seen, the emerging international community established three pillars – the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN Charter, and the Geneva Conventions. These were a huge step forward for global human rights and humanitarian standards.

Like the League of Nations Covenant, the UN Charter had a mandate given to the Security Council to establish a system for the regulation of arms, but for more than 60 years the Security Council never even proposed a system for the conventional arms trade, despite the trade continuing to grow and fuel the very violations the three new global standards were meant to curtail.

Although the Cold War brought with it new multilateral controls over the movement of arms across borders, such limitations were outside the UN and part of the calculated global game of chess between NATO members on the one hand and Warsaw Pact countries on the other. Any concern for the human rights or humanitarian impact of arms transfers was again notably absent.

But a series of shocking crises in the late 1980s and 1990s – the first Gulf War, the Balkans conflicts, the 1994 Rwanda genocide and conflicts in Africa’s Great Lakes region, West Africa, Afghanistan and in Central America amongst others – drove home the urgency of moving forward with attempts to control the global arms trade.

The International Code of Conduct

As these crises were kicking off, NGOs and lawyers became increasingly concerned about the serious human rights and humanitarian impact of irresponsible arms transfers.

Wood recalls how in 1993 and 1994, he and representatives from three other NGOs met in an Amnesty International office in central London to draw up a draft legally binding International Code of Conduct for international arms transfers – for tactical reasons aimed initially at European Union (EU) member states.

The EU – shocked by the post-Gulf War revelations about transfers of weapons and munitions – had just agreed to a list of eight criteria for arms exports. This was followed by a set of principles on arms exports agreed in the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in November 1993. But the problem with the EU guidelines and OSCE principles, Wood explains, was that the criteria were entirely voluntary, while what NGOs were after was a set of legally binding standards to strictly control arms transfers.

Joined by representatives from Saferworld, the World Development Movement and the British-American Security Information Council – he sought the help of legal experts to come up with guidelines rooted in international human rights and humanitarian law.

Amnesty International Sections across Europe began promoting the idea to their political leaders. Then Amnesty International USA and other US-based NGOs caught wind of the idea and the advocacy effort spread across the Atlantic, where it piqued the interest of former Costa Rican President and Nobel Peace Prize Winner Óscar Arias.

Arias invited fellow Nobel Peace Laureates including Mikhail Gorbachev and Amnesty International to attend the “State of the World Forum” he convened in San Francisco in October 1996. Wood and Susan Waltz, then head of Amnesty International’s governing body, the International Executive Committee (IEC), thrashed out a revised International Code of Conduct with Oscar Arias and several other NGOs.

Then – for the first time to a global audience – a group of Nobel Peace Laureates and NGOs began to articulate their joint vision of an entirely new kind of global agreement to control arms transfers so as to “keep the means of repression and violence out of the hands of dictators and abusers of human rights”.

That vision – rooted in the simple idea thought up by a few dedicated people in Amnesty International and other NGOs in the London office in 1993 – kicked off years of efforts to lobby political leaders about the legally binding Code, who in turn led legislative measures on arms trade controls.

John Kerry was a notable supporter of the Code idea in the US Congress and along with Cynthia McKinney and others he battled over two years to win a law in 1998 mandating the US President to negotiate an international agreement.

Also in 1998, the EU established a Code of Conduct on Arms Exports. According to Wood, the Nobel Laureates were disappointed the EU Code was only voluntary, but it was the first time a detailed set of arms export criteria were established relevant to international legal, including human rights, obligations.

Taking it to the world stage

In November 2000, Arias and Amnesty International – joined by Nobel Peace Laureates Desmond Tutu, José Ramos Horta and others, as well as a stronger group of NGOs – asked Costa Rica’s UN Mission to circulate a revised draft of the Code of Conduct to all UN Member States.

“At the outset, we were laughed at by the disarmament experts, but in Amnesty International we know that all challenging ideas to change the world by creating new treaties will first be dismissed”, Wood recalls.

According to Wood, the response from sympathetic diplomats was that additional work was needed to shore up the legal provisions contained in the draft and that many States were by then involved in a UN process to establish a Programme of Action on small arms only, rather than a treaty on the trade of all conventional arms.

And so he convinced the core group of NGOs – joined several years earlier by Oxfam UK and Ploughshares of Canada – to seek further help from legal scholars to sift through the canon of international law, including human rights and humanitarian law, to refine the treaty proposal.

The result was a revised “Framework Convention on International Arms Transfers”, now fortified with some 200 references to international standards relating to arms transfers. Amnesty International and partner Nobel Peace Laureates and NGOs began contacting friendly governments to promote the new Convention proposal in 2001.

“On one level, the concept of the treaty was relatively simple,” Wood recalls. “It was building on states’ existing legal obligations. The whole body of international law – including international humanitarian and human rights law – were embedded in what was a relatively short text. A core group of governments began to take it very seriously.”

Amnesty International and Saferworld invited government representatives to discuss the new draft – including at a key meeting held in 2001 at Cambridge University’s Lauterpacht Centre for International Law held under the auspices of the legal scholar Daniel Bethlehem.

Subsequent meetings were held in Finland – an emerging ally on the draft treaty – and Tanzania. Each time the number of governments grew, says Wood: “It began to spread, and we began to cascade the international discussion about this idea.”

Control Arms campaign

Once the concept had attracted serious interest from progressive governments, the core group of NGOs hatched a plan to roll out the idea to a much wider audience. The wider coalition of NGOs working on small arms realized that the Programme of Action would not have a sufficient human rights and humanitarian impact without a treaty to control the trade.

In October 2003, Amnesty International, Oxfam and the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA) launched the Control Arms campaign for a global Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) in more than 100 countries.

Activists around the world promoted the world’s first Million Faces online photo petition and engaged in innovative public stunts aimed at pressing governments to introduce the draft treaty at the UN. The public events included a camel caravan across the Sahel in Mali, elephants in India, and a Control Arms-branded longboat which won the annual boat festival in Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh.

The draft treaty gradually gathered steam, with the number of supportive governments swelling from just a handful in 2001 to more than 50 by early 2005.

Back in London, the public pressure also began to pay off, and in September 2004 then-Foreign Minister Jack Straw made a surprise announcement that the UK would support the draft ATT.

Wood recalls the reaction overseas: “I remember that day – it was electrifying because Jack Straw’s speech was reported to EU governments we were with in The Hague, and many of them had no idea that he was going to make this announcement. It was like a political bomb. It had been tough going, but once we got the UK on board, France and the rest of the EU all joined in, and the number of countries began to spread rapidly in Africa and Latin America.”

Back to the UN

By mid-2006, the UN in New York was abuzz with talk about the Arms Trade Treaty, says Wood.

That June, Oxfam and other Control Arms members delivered the “Million Faces” campaign to then-UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, calling on leaders to back the treaty.

The next month, seven countries – Argentina, Australia, Costa Rica, Finland, Japan, Kenya and the UK – circulated a “Towards an Arms Trade Treaty” resolution in the General Assembly. When it came up for a vote at the UN’s First Committee on Disarmament in October 2006, 153 states backed it. While several large arms exporting states like Russia and China abstained, there was only one state against –the USA under the Bush administration.

On the basis of that vote, a formal UN process began to seek member states’ views on the proposed ATT. Meanwhile, Control Arms campaigners organized a “People’s Consultation” in scores of countries, urging political leaders to speak out in favour of the treaty. More than 100 states responded, and two UN groups were formed to carry on the debate on the text.

By late 2009, political backing for the treaty had grown sufficiently to introduce a new UN General Assembly resolution. In October that year, the USA – now under the Obama administration – announced that the treaty would have US backing as long as the final vote would be held on the basis of consensus, meaning that all states had to agree.

Two months later, more than three quarters of UN member states voted in favour of opening the formal treaty negotiation process – including five preparatory meetings over the course of 2010 and 2011, ending in four weeks of final negotiations in July 2012.

The devil in the details

Over the course of that process, clear negotiating positions have emerged among the Permanent Five UN Security Council members – China, France, Russia, the UK and the USA – as well as other states.

Some, such as the USA have wanted to narrow the scope of the treaty by excluding ammunition like bullets. Others, like Russia, are fine with all the items and activities covered in the treaty text, but have made it clear they do not want human rights and humanitarian standards to play a role in controlling arms transfers.

Regional and sub-regional alliances and enmities also play a role, so the process of diplomatic trade-offs is often complex and time-consuming, says Wood.

Time-wasting by what he calls the ATT’s hard-line sceptics – Iran, North Korea, Syria, Egypt and Pakistan – was part of the reason the July 2012 talks failed to end in agreement, and a new round of discussions has been slated from 18-28 March 2013 to finalize talks on the treaty.

Wood acknowledges that Amnesty International and the Control Arms Coalition have still had a lot of work to do at the final conference to win the strongest possible treaty and attract the greatest number of states parties.

“The global arms trade is hugely dominated by about 20 exporting countries and a handful of very large import-dependent countries, with the USA, EU, Russia and China at the top. So getting that balance right to have all or most of the trade included while winning a robust treaty is not at all easy, but that’s what we’re going to have to do,” he says.

And even after the treaty has been adopted, there will be an enormous amount of work to do to get the political will of governments to ensure the functioning of what he envisions as a developing ATT global framework that will oversee how states parties implement and report back on their treaty obligations.

But for Wood the major achievement of this whole process – this long journey towards an ATT – has been the acceptance by most governments now that arms trade controls should be aligned with states’ international obligations including their human rights obligations.

“The originality of the Arms Trade Treaty idea was that – for the first time in history – states would have to consider international human rights and humanitarian law, as well as international criminal law, as a basis on which to decide whether an arms transfer across borders should go ahead. That is the kernel of the idea of the ATT, and it came from a few of us in a little room in Amnesty. And it’s still the centre of the negotiations,” he says.

“And it just goes to prove that if ordinary people like me, Amnesty International members around the world and our partners in civil society can think of a potent idea that’s worth fighting for, and stick at the concept and develop the proposal to get traction from political leaders, we really can make a difference.

“The landscape of global discussion about arms control is now completely transformed. The political leaders need to seize the moment and not let it fail as they did in the 1930s.”

RightsNI is delighted to welcome this guest post from Prof Aoife Nolan. Prof Nolan is Professor of International Human Rights Law at the University of Nottingham. She has published extensively in the areas of human rights, particularly in relation to economic and social rights and children’s rights, as well as on constitutional law. She was formerly a lecturer at QUB where she was Assistant Director of the Human Rights Centre.

The University of Nottingham Human Rights Law Centre Summer School on the Rights of the Child  will run from 24 to 28 June 2013 at Nottingham University.

The objective of this exciting and comprehensive programme is to consider issues concerning the rights of the child that are a matter of current  legal, political and societal debate, both internationally and comparatively. These include violence against children, child participation, child poverty, and child rights monitoring and advocacy. There will be devoted sessions to international and regional child rights law, including the work of the international courts and treaty monitoring bodies mandated to consider violations of the rights of the child.

The Summer School faculty are all highly experienced international experts on child rights, with backgrounds in advocacy, research and practice. The Summer School is being led by Professor Aoife Nolan  of Nottingham University School of Law

Members of the Summer School faculty for 2013 include:

Professor Michael Freeman, Emeritus Professor of Law, University College London and Editor of International Journal of Children’s Rights;

Professor Ursula Kilkelly, Head of the Department of Law and Director of the Child Law Clinic, University College Cork;

Professor Laura Lundy , Director of the Centre for Children’s Rights Queen’s University, Belfast;

Professor Dominic McGoldrick, Professor of International Human Rights Law, University of Nottingham;

Dr Benyam Dawit Mezmur , Chairperson of the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child of the African Union, and member of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child;

Ms Lisa Myers, Director of the NGO group for the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Geneva.

The Summer School is aimed broadly at current and potential professionals in non-governmental organisations, inter-governmental organisations, child rights-focussed national human rights institutions, relevant state bodies, interested academics and students. The training methods include Q and A and group exercises. The working language will be English. All participants will receive an extensive electronic file of resource materials.

For further information, please visit www.nottingham.ac.uk/hrlc/SummerSchool or contact Miss Kobie Neita – +44 (0)115 84 66309

We are delighted to welcome this guest post from Lynda Sullivan, a human rights activist from Northern Ireland currently based in Peru, where she is working with a local community concerned at the health and environmental implications of a huge mining project in the area.

On World Water Day 2013 hundreds of thousands of people across the world are fighting for their right to water. I’d like to highlight one such case.

In the northern highlands of Peru, in the province of Cajamarca, the local population are fighting off a mega mining project known as Minas Conga. This 6 billion dollar project - majority owned by US-based Newmont mining company, and partly owned by Peruvian Buenaventura and the World Bank, is fiercely opposed by the vast majority of the people who live there. One reason why they oppose it is because they can see what the same company has done in one area of the province - the region with the same name, Cajamarca.

For the past 20 years this mine has dumped toxic waste into rivers used by the local population. The local water processing plant admits they don’t have the capacity to clean the level of heavy metals that flows into the plant - and so they remain in the water as it flows right back out and into the houses of the people in the 240,000 strong city of Cajamarca. The campesinos who live in the countryside and survive mainly through agriculture and cattle rearing have reported high levels of animal deformities, huge amounts of fish washing up dead, a severe water shortage leaving them unable to irrigate their crops, skin deformities on themselves and their children, and unusually high rates of cancer and birth deformities.

In one small town called Choropampa in 2000, due to a mercury spill at the fault of Yanacocha, 10,000 inhabitants suffered the effects of mercury poisoning. Some people even thought, as the mercury ran down the streets, that this highly toxic substance was gold, and began picking it up with their hands - to disastrous effect. Tests have also shown that many Yanacocha workers themselves have dangerously high levels of mercury in their blood. However, once they are unable to work they are abandoned by the company.

Yanacocha itself admits its appalling record “We are not proud of the current state of our relationship with the people of Cajamarca”. However it’s a bit late, they’re nearly finished their extraction in their current mine, and now hope to move on to Minas Conga as its next project. Yet it will not be the same again - it will be three times the size.

The project plans to consume 3069 hectares of land to extract the gold and copper that lies beneath. They plan to drain and exploit two of the most important lagoons and the material they will extract will be dumped on top of two others – effectively cutting off the head of the entire water system; a water system which serves over 30,000 people in 200 communities. The water remaining will most likely be polluted with heavy metals - they plan to produce an average of ninety thousand tons of toxic tailing a day - every day for the 17 year life-span of the project.

This is what the people of Cajamarca are trying to stop. However their resistance has been heavily oppressed by the national police and the army - on orders from the central government. In July of last year during protests in the cities of Celendin and Bambamarcafive protesters were shot dead as police fired live ammunition into the crowds - including a 17 year old boy who was shot in the head by an army helicopter from above. Over 140 have been injured, one man is now paralysed. Human rights defenders have been beaten, while held without charge, in police custody - including a former priest Marco Arana and a young human rights reporter Jorge Chavez. Community leaders have to travel across country to answer to scores of legal allegations - a example of which being “psychological damage to the mining company” for being involved in the organisation of a protest.

But the resistance continues. The communities are organised and strong – helped partly by the already existing social structures of the Rondas Campesinas (Peasant Self-Defence Patrols where groups of men and women from each community keep watch for robbers or any trouble on their lands). They want to organise a consultation, or referendum, on the mining project - since no consultation took place before the mining company was given the green light. The regional government is supportive but the central government and the mining company say it is illegal and are threatening High Court legal action.

Some human rights organisations (such as Grufides) are helping the mainly rural communities to bring their case to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (CIDDHH). Just a few days ago on 18^th March the Coordinadora Nacional de Derechos Humanos (National Coordinator of Human Rights) - a civil society body aimed at protecting human rights in Peru, gave evidence to the CIDDHH in Washington. The complaint raises the violations of rights of indigenous and tribal people as enshrined in Convention 169 of the International Labour Organisation and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Not to mention the stack of human rights protections which have been violated during the repression of the people by the state and the police. This complaint is in process, however general opinion is that while every avenue must be tried, they don’t have much confidence in outcome. Certain countries in Latin America, such as Ecuador, Bolivia and Brazil see the CIDDHH as an agent of the United States and want to leave the court; therefore the CIDDHH is reluctant to criticise any government too heavily.

So what hope is there for the people of Cajamarca in stopping Minas Conga? There are some success stories where communities have successfully managed to fight off the might of the mines - such as the people of the small town of Tambogrande, however these are few. The government of Peru seems to have placed all its economic eggs in one basket – mining accounts for 61% of the country’s exports, and it hopes to expand the sector – see below for a map of mining concessions of Peru (as of 2009). Cajamarca itself is over 80% concessioned - a region where 80% make a living through agriculture. So the question for the people who are fighting to protect their right to water is not, “can we win? – it’s “how can we not try?”.

If you’d like to find out more about the situation in Cajamarca, Peru and a similar story in Cajamarca, Colombia check out LASC‘s Latin America Week (Facebook) which includes an event in Belfast at the Culturlann at 4.30pm on Saturday 13th April.

A very exciting two-day Colloquium at Queen’s University on emotional dynamics, law and legal discourse, will be held today and tomorrow.  The University has confirmed, this morning, that there are still places if individuals want to attend, with sessions starting today at 1.45 PM (but note the fee in cash or cheque of £25 for students/unwaged; £75 for other delegates – inclusive of teas/coffee and lunch on both days).

The Colloquium is entitled “The Emotional Dynamics of Law and Legal Discourse”.  The QUB programme explains:

“In his seminal work on Emotional Intelligence Daniel Goleman suggests that the common view of human intelligence is far too narrow, and that emotions play a far greater role in thought, decision-making and individual success than is commonly acknowledged. The importance of emotion to human experience cannot be denied, yet the relationship between law and emotions is one that has not been systematically explored until recent years; as Maroney pointed out in 2006, the law has traditionally operated on the presumption that there is a world of difference between reason and emotion, that the sphere of law admits only of reason, and that in this sphere it is essential to keep emotional factors out of the picture. However, the last two decades have witnessed a growing interest in the relationship between law and emotions. The agenda was set in the 1990s by Susan Bandes in her influential set of essays The Passions of Law (New York University Press, New York, 1999), and since then has been developed further in such diverse fields as criminal law, emotion in judging, victims’ rights, refugee law, hate crimes, family law and the law of burial disputes.

Until now, the study of law and emotion has been very much a North American phenomenon, though there is a growing interest on the other side of the Atlantic. This conference will bring together scholars working in the diverse fields of law and the emotions across a number of jurisdictions, with two of the foremost US academic workings in the area. This will be one of the first specialist conferences to be held in the UK on law and emotions, and will be an interdisciplinary event designed to stimulate further research collaboration in the area.”

Within the Colloquium, there will be highly valuable presentations on migrant rights and refugee law in this context:

Professor Kathryn Abrams of Berkeley School of Law provides the following abstract of her paper:

“The United States stands at the brink of comprehensive immigration reform, the work of a burgeoning movement for immigrant justice. While the citizen-members of this movement have registered their power at the polls, the movement has been fuelled by the growing visibility and leadership of undocumented youth. This surprising development has reflected the skillful and determined management of emotions by these young activists:  their assumption of the stance of “undocumented and unafraid,” and their striving for affective connection through the narration of their own stories. Drawing on ethnographic observation and qualitative interviews with activists in Arizona, one of the leading sites of immigrant justice mobilization, I illuminate the role that the experience, performance, and management of emotions have played in a major effort to shape the law.”

Dr Jane Herlihy, of the Centre for the Study of Emotion and Law (CSEL) in London provides this summary of her presentation:

“A refugee, as defined by the Geneva Convention, is a person who ” … owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country…” (Article 1(2)). People seeking protection as refugees have to present their claim to a receiving state, usually including an account of past experiences – often highly traumatic – in order to establish a ‘well-founded fear’.

This presentation will draw on studies examining way in which receiving states manage the decision to allow some people protection as refugees, a decision which rests heavily on an assessment of the credibility of the claimant and their account.  An understanding of human behaviour, intentions and motivations would seem to be an important underpinning of such decisions.  We will look at the emotional aspects of this decision-making, and where psychological science can be of use, both in the area of ‘legal doctrine’ and in working with ‘legal actors’ to ensure that this crucial area of decision making is based on the best available science of human behaviour.”

In my professional capacity as a refugee lawyer, I have been very interested in the ground-breaking work of CSEL.  David Rhys Jones, currently the Acting Chair of CSEL, advised on an article that I wrote, “The use of expert evidence by asylum applicants at appeal” in Law Centre NI’s Frontline Social Welfare Law Quarterly, Issue 83, page 24-25 (accessible here).

CSEL sets out on its own website:

“The Centre for the Study of Emotion and Law has its roots in a research project which set out to empirically investigate the basis for the assumption, common in asylum claim determinations, that traumatic memories are always consistently and accurately recalled.

We uphold the highest standards of empirical research, using established methodologies and submitting our studies to ethical scrutiny and peer review processes. In this way we can be confident that we are making available the best possible scientific knowledge to legal decision making processes”

CSEL’s most recent annual report provides details of the organisation’s work, including research, publications in this area, such as papers on the impact of sexual violence on disclosure in Home Office interviews, investigating discrepancies in repeated interviews and a project taking CSEL’s research findings to voluntary organisations who support traumatized women seeking asylum and outreach work.

Further documents in relation to the Colloquium, including whom to contact if you want to sign up to go along today, can be downloaded from the QUB School of Law website here.

Rights NI is delighted to welcome this guest post from  Professor Fionnuala Ni Aoláin. Professor Ní Aoláin is concurrently a professor of law at the University of Ulster’s Transitional Justice Institute in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and the Dorsey & Whitney Chair in Law at the University of Minnesota Law School. She is co-founder and associate director of the Transitional Justice Institute. She can be contacted at f.niaolain[at]ulster.ac.uk

The Annual TJI Summer School takes places at Dalriada House, on the Jordanstown campus of the University of Ulster from June 17-21 2013.

This year the Summer School will focus on the identification, training and presence of women and gendered perspectives in peace negotiations, peace mediation and ongoing post-conflict implementation. This five day course will offer participants a unique opportunity to understand the legal framing and policy requirements mandating greater inclusiveness in peace processes and mediations of conflict; the arguments for the representation of women in such processes and the barriers to representation of women; the challenges to including gendered perspectives in negotiation, including greater understanding of men’s roles in conflict; the capacity of positive masculinities to model change in conflict settings; as well as identifying the issues and mechanisms that most likely advance women and gender equality in change contexts.

The faculty teaching the summer school includes Professor Monica McWilliams (TJI), Professor Fionnuala Ni Aolain (Harvard Law School & TJI), Dr. Catherine O’ Rourke (TJI), Dr. Aisling Swaine (TJI), Jane Gordon (Independent Gender Expert), Dr. Sari Kovo (the Afghanistan Analysts Network), Dr. Khanyasela Moyo (TJI), and Eilish Rooney (TJI).   In addition to providing a substantial intellectual experience for participants the summer school will have a strong practical and skills component, with emphasis on field experience and practical negotiation skills.

Full details are at: http://www.transitionaljustice.ulster.ac.uk/documents/TJISummerSchool_000.pdf. Application forms can be accessed at tjisummerschool@ulster.ac.uk