How not to do it: Northern Ireland's Bill of Rights, OurKingdom

OurKingdom — Mon, 19 May 2008 12:59:17 +0100

Fair Deal (Slugger O'Toole): In Preparing Britain for the future, the government proposes consulting the UK public about the Bill of Rights and Responsibilities. Such a Bill is based on a strong societal consensus and establishing a route to that consensus will be fundamental to its success.

Northern Ireland has been wrestling with its own Bill of Rights since the Belfast Agreement of 1998 and despite 10 years it remains a distant prospect. The task was set out thus:

4. The new Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (see paragraph 5 below) will be invited to consult and to advise on the scope for defining, in Westminster legislation, rights supplementary to those in the European Convention on Human Rights, to reflect the particular circumstances of Northern Ireland, drawing as appropriate on international instruments and experience. These additional rights to reflect the principles of mutual respect for the identity and ethos of both communities and parity of esteem, and - taken together with the ECHR - to constitute a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland.

A decade later, there is still no agreement on what the 94 words mean. In the first attempt, Nationalism and Unionism took up predictable positions (more from habit than thought) but the fundamental damage to the process was done by third sector representatives. Many queued up to turn their policy agendas into long lists of economic and social rights. With the NIHRC end product closer to Nationalist and third sector demands, government ignored it. Read the rest of this post...

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How not to do it: Northern Ireland's Bill of Rights, OurKingdom