Amnesty International’s Annual Report on Northern Ireland and Ireland was published last week as part of its annual series of country reports. Globally, the report considered the world to be a more dangerous place for refugees and migrants and stated that countries were increasingly using the cover of ‘internal affairs’ to block full consideration of(…)
‘I’ve got one thing to say to you, my boy … you can’t trust the Irish, they are all liars … and that’s what you have to remember, so just don’t forget it’. Death cannot constrain the effervescent charm of Margaret Thatcher. Or maybe Peter Mandelson, who revealed this gobbet of bile to(…)
The auguries for “Marching Season” in Northern Ireland look bleak. Months of loyalist protests against Belfast City Council’s decision to restrict the flying of the Union Flag are fuelling tensions. Naomi Long, the Alliance MP for East Belfast (who has been at the centre of the storm since her Party backed the current arrangements regarding(…)
We are delighted to welcome this guest post from Catherine Turner in response to Darren McStravick’s previous post, available here. Catherine is a lecturer at Durham Law School where she is a member of Law and Conflict at Durham, Durham Global Security Institute, and the Durham Human Rights Centre. It is customary in the face(…)
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(…)
We are delighted to welcome this post from Dr Ciara Hackett. Ciara joined the School of Law at Queens University Belfast in August 2012, prior to that she held a teaching and research fellowship at the School of Law, National University of Ireland Galway. Her research explores a diverse range of issues in the areas(…)
David Cameron is shocked. Ed Miliband is shocked. But no one is really shocked. Patrick Finucane (pictured left) has been dead for nearly 24 years and the world moves on cruelly fast. Labour’s demand for a full public inquiry into his killing smacks of making political capital out of a family denied answers (let alone(…)
Human rights cases rarely seem to generate media interest unless some populist bogeyman, like Abu Qatada, has successfully scuppered a government policy by running to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. In the UK in particular, the confluence of human rights claims by figures such as Qatada, and the distrust of European institutions (irrespective(…)
At 07.30 this morning, David Black, a Northern Ireland Prison Service officer was ambushed and shot dead on his way to work by Republicans opposed to the Good Friday Agreement. Though the actions of violent Republicans are often portrayed as emanating from a sense of blood lust or barbarism, I have previously argued that this(…)
Last Friday the Queen’s Bench Division of the High Court in London decided (in the Mutua case) that three Kenyans could pursue claims for damages against the UK Government for its use of torture during the Kenya Emergency of 1952-1960. In the UK and Ireland today the events in 1950s Kenya, as the colonial authorities(…)
