Sir, – With respect to Ireland’s second review before the Human Rights Council in Geneva at the UN on May 11th, several countries called on Ireland to ratify the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention against Torture.
While it sounds like a rather off-putting and technical phenomenon, it is, in fact, a vital mechanism for protecting people who are in some form of detention, who are not “free to go”.
This, of course, includes prisoners who have lost their liberty following a criminal conviction. It also includes people who are mentally ill and confined to mental institutions for treatment. It includes young people in child-detention schools, at a distance from their families and communities.
It could, also, arguably include very infirm elders suffering from dementia who are not free to leave nursing homes and are, therefore, dependent on others for their constant care and to ensure that their basic human rights and dignity are maintained.
Where individuals – our sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, friends – lose their liberty, for whatever reason, when the doors are closed and the public are effectively shutout, there is a very real and potentially dangerous power dynamic at play.
Clearly, most people responsible for the care and custody of people in detention are above reproach and would not dream of deliberately subjecting those “not free to go” to inhuman or degrading treatment or torture. But some will inevitably abuse their power and cause untold harm.
A national preventative mechanism is essential to ensure that the litany of “sins of our fathers” as perpetrated in industrial schools, the Magdalene laundries and recently in nursing homes are not repeated continually into the future. It is about setting up safeguards and structures and shining a light where light desperately needs to be shone. For all our benefit.
That is why our politicians, both those in Government and those on the Opposition benches, must work together to ensure the prompt ratification of the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention against Torture.
There is no reason why it cannot be ratified within six months, along with the disability convention. We need to get cracking urgently on establishing a national preventative mechanism. The Irish Human Rights and Equality Authority might be a suitable body, if the necessary resources are made available to carry out an expanded mandate.
The only obstacle to addressing the protocol issue is, and has been, the absence of political will. There also would appear to be an absence of will to ensure timely implementation of recommendations of international human rights bodies on the part of senior policymakers in the Department of Justice.
In its Rights Now document, the Irish Council for Civil Liberties called for a Dáil committee to be established to enforce UN recommendations.
The UK recommended that Ireland should “consider overarching committee on human rights and equality”, to which the Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald responded that the question of an Oireachtas committee on human rights was “an issue to be considered by the Oireachtas itself now that a new Government is in place”.
The Oireachtas should move swiftly in this regard. Surely establishing a committee to oversee Ireland’s compliance with human rights obligations cannot be a divisive issue. Who, after all, would want to be seen to be against the promotion and vindication of human rights of the people on this island? Surely not a single TD. – Yours, etc,
JANE MULCAHY,
Ballyphehane,
Cork.