Symphysiotomy group to meet UN Human Rights Committee

A group representing hundreds of women who had a symphysiotomy during childbirth are due to appear before a United Nations watchdog committee in Geneva this weekend to discuss their plight.

Survivors of Symphysiotomy (SoS) representative of Marie O'Connor said failure by the Government to provide "an effective remedy" was at issue. "Two whitewash reports and a skewed grace and favour scheme do not amount to an effective remedy under international law," she said in a statement ahead of the meeting.

It comes days after the group’s members rejected an ex-gratia redress scheme which the Government announced last week. The scheme would provide payments of up to €150,000 for women who suffered the procedure.

A symphysiotomy involved the breaking of the woman’s pelvic bone during childbirth. They were carried out on about 1,500 women between the 1920s and mid-1980s. For many women, the procedure left permanent injuries such as incontinence, difficulty walking and chronic pain.

“These operations were illegal because they were involuntary. The fact that symphysiotomy was a mass medical experiment made the need for patient consent even more acute,” Ms O’Connor said.

"Yet last week, wrongly, the Walsh report justified doctors' failure to seek patient consent in symphysiotomy. This is a point we will raise with the UN Human Rights Committee, " she added.

In its submission to the UN committee SoS urged it to find that the “introduction of any ex-gratia scheme to compensate them without an accompanying admission of liability would fail to meet the test for an effective remedy.”

It asked the committee to find that the “very limited response” by the State to women meant it had not provided an“effective remedy” by “failing to initiate a prompt, independent and impartial inquiry” and failing to provide” a “ fair and adequate restitution for the damage they sustained”.

It also urged the committee to call on the State to set up an independent statutory inquiry and enter into a “fair and just settlement” of legal action by survivors.

The SoS submission told the UN committee that it expected the State would ”answer these charges” by speaking of its recently published review Walsh review and plans to establish an ex-gratia scheme. However SoS was sharply critical of the Walsh report which it said failed to “adequately or impartially investigate” the practise “in violation of Ireland’s obligations”.

The UN Human Rights Committee is a body of independent experts that monitors implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights by its State parties, which Ireland has ratified.

The group’s submission to the UN outlines eight key questions which it wants to be put tio the State on the basies of it’s “ongoing violations” of obligations under articles two and seven of the Covenant.

Some questions relate to the State’s admissions around the procedure, such as , does the State accept operations were perfomed without consent and this was a violation of women’s human rights? Other questions relate to compensation such as - does the State accept that an ex-gratia scheme based on no admission of liability fails to meet the test of the Covenant?

Ms O’Connor said the group also has support from the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) which would also be in Geneva. Among the key recommendations in the ICCL’s ssubmission to the committee last month was that there should be “more effective and comprehensive and independent mechanisms for truth finding and redress for the victims of agents motivated by “religious ethos” including survivors of symphysiotomy.