The use of informers has been criticised by the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission (GSOC) recently. The GSOC is investigating claims that some members of the Gardai permitted the continuation of serious criminality in exchange for information on other criminal actors. As I’ve written before, the use of undercover police officers and informers is fraught with problems, in terms of the(…)
We are delighted to welcome this guest post from Darren McStravick, a PhD student at School of Law and Government, Dublin City University. Darren holds a law degree and a masters in human rights law from Queens University Belfast. He has previously worked as a legal researcher with the Northern Ireland Law Commission. His PhD research, for which he holds an O’Hare(…)
On 13 December 2012, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights delivered its judgment in El-Masri v. The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Fiona de Londras has set out the background to the case in her post here. The decision has already been praised by NGOs and some international organisations. Jean-Claude Mignon(…)
Human Rights in Ireland welcomes this guest post from Dr Ciara Smyth. Ciara is a lecturer in the School of Law, NUI Galway and a member of the board of the Irish Refugee Council. The opinions expressed here are personal. There have been four damning indictments of the Irish asylum system in as many months.(…)
It is sometimes forgotten that every international institution is made up of people – lawyers, judges, assistants, policy makers. The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) is not an exception; it is built up of professional lawyers who go through extremely competitive selection procedures. The Court is careful in selecting its staff. The Court elected(…)
Julian Assange (pictured left), founder of Wikileaks, friend of open government, enemy of secrecy, and suspected rapist, has hardly been out of the newspapers this week. News that, following the defeat of his legal efforts to resist extradition to Sweden on the basis of a European Arrest Warrant, Assange had sequestered himself in Ecuador’s UK embassy(…)
When it comes to errors of law in Westminster politics, you live by the sword and you die by the sword. Teresa May, the UK home Secretary, made huge capital at her last Conservative Party Conference in 2011 by trashing the human rights judgment that, as she described it, prevented an illegal immigrant from being(…)
On Friday 11 November, PILA and the PILS Project will host their inaugural joint annual conference at Croke Park Conference Centre – Political Commitment, Practical Protection: Using the ECHR North and South. The conference is focused on the political commitment to and practical implementation of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) in Northern Ireland and the(…)
This morning the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights handed down its long-awaited judgment in Al Skeini & Others v United Kingdom, and its partner case of Al Jedda v United Kingdom, concerning whether the United Kingdom had any liability under the Convention for the alleged deaths and detention of individuals in(…)
Following on from Máiréad’s post here, I thought it might be useful to provide a very quick primer on the Court and the Convention, particularly given the level of confusion that is already being expressed about it. For people familiar with the Court (pictured left) there will be nothing new here, but hopefully it will(…)
