Former Amnesty chief plans project with Roddy Doyle

Former Amnesty International Ireland executive director Seán Love is to set up a new organisation with author Roddy Doyle to help immigrant children.

Mr Love, who stepped down from his role at Amnesty's Irish section on Thursday, has been replaced by One in Four founder Colm O'Gorman. His new organisation will help immigrant children using creative writing.

Mr Love said it had been a challenge to get the Government to look at human rights in a domestic context because of "a lack of understanding rather than resistance".

He said economic and social rights were not respected in Ireland and added that the right to health and education should be considered as important as the right not to be tortured.

Mr Love said he was proud of Amnesty's achievements in influencing Government policy on Ireland's €26 billion arms trade and pointed to forthcoming legislation which he said should introduce real controls on arms exports.

One of the more controversial challenges Mr Love faced as director was the international organisation's decision to support abortion where women's lives are threatened or they have been victims of sexual violence.

Amnesty's Irish section is no longer working on the issue following a vote by its members. Mr Love denied that this had weakened the organisation in Ireland but acknowledged that it had been a difficult issue.

Mr Love moved from the organisation's board to become director in 2001 just as US president George W Bush was beginning the "war on terror".

The diminution of human rights by the US since 9/11 he said had "given a blank cheque to regimes like China, Russia, Zimbabwe".

These countries had been "under pressure before then to change and are now acting with impunity under the umbrella of counter-terrorism", according to Mr Love.

His new project with Roddy Doyle, Fighting Words, will engage writers to work with marginalised people. Modelled on a San Francisco-based organisation called 826 Valencia, it will focus on helping immigrant children to learn English and become involved in creative writing.