The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission
by Stephen Livingstone
Hampered by its limited mandate and powers, struggling to establish its independence before a sceptical public and faced by a largely unsympathetic administration SACHR was always likely to find its task a difficult one. It is to the credit of many of its members that it did have an impact in a number of areas. Perhaps the most significant was in the area it was expressly required to examine, the law relating to religious discrimination. Here SACHR's 1987 report on discrimination in employment11 provided the framework for reforms of employment discrimination law realised in the Fair Employment Act 1989, even if some commentators felt this Act fell short of the SACHR recommendations.12 That legislation provided for a review of the law on religious discrimination after 5 years and when this took place it was again to SACHR that the government looked to provide the authoritative study.13 From the time of its first report the Commission also did venture beyond the scope of its statutory mandate (sometimes at the express request of government) and produced a valuable series of reports and studies on matters such as family law, gay rights, education and abortion in Northern Ireland. Some of these did result in the government introducing legislative changes.14 SACHR also sought to influence government policy in the very politically sensitive area of anti-terrorist powers. Here it met with a much lesser level of success. Recommendations for greater rights for those detained under emergency legislation such as the video taping of interviews15, immediate access to legal representation16 and the need for judicial approval of extensions of detention in police custody beyond 48 hours17 were all consistently rejected. Calls for the removal of exclusion orders under the Prevention of Terrorism Act18 or the reform of the law relating to the use of force by the police and army19 fared no better. However some were to be implemented when political conditions changed20 and SACHR's observations on the compliance of emergency legislation with human rights norms were given significant weight by the European Court of Human Rights.21 Perhaps the nadir of its influence was reached when the government introduced legislation curtailing the right to silence22 without even consulting SACHR as to its content. Above all SACHR's consistent recommendations for the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into United Kingdom law, first made in 197723, as a means of ensuring greater protection of human rights in Northern Ireland was consistently rejected by government. Only when incorporation became part of the British political agenda, with the victory of the Labour Party in the 1997 general elections, did the idea of Northern Irish law acquiring fundamental rights guarantees become a reality.
Overall therefore SACHR has had a somewhat limited influence on policy making
and implementation as regards the protection of human rights in Northern
Ireland. Much of this can be traced to its limited powers (which it has
continually drawn attention to in its annual reports), limited resources,
and government intransigence. However it is also fair to observe that the
Commission has not always made the best use of the powers and resources
at its disposal. Given that it found its reports meeting little response
at the national level, SACHR was somewhat slow to make use of international
channels to highlight its cause. Several of the United Kingdom's early reports
to the U.N. Human Rights Committee and U.N. Committee Against Torture went
by without the U.N. bodies having the benefit of SACHR's observations.24
The Commission did not do all it might have done to publicise its work,
even within Northern Ireland. The 1977 report on a Bill of Rights resulted
from a major seminar which, even if it did not produce legislative change,
was frequently quoted in debates around the Bill of Rights issue in the
United Kingdom for the next twenty years. However SACHR never again convened
such a major public event. By the early 1990s it was issuing an average
of only 3 press releases a year and concentrating most of its media work
around the publication of its annual report.25 This was an increasingly
bulky document which the media often found difficult to digest and summarise.
On occasions SACHR seemed slow to react to new causes of concern with regard
to the protection of human rights (for example with respect to intimidation
of defence lawyers or racial discrimination in Northern Ireland) and entered
the fray only after the issue had been raised by human rights NGOs. Finally,
although the Commission extended its remit beyond its original mandate it
did not seek to extend it too far. Nothing in the Northern Ireland Constitution
Act prevented SACHR from conducting investigations into issues of immediate
concern (such actions could be justified on the ground that they were instrumental
to offering advice to the Secretary of State) but the Commission shied away
from embarking on such inquiries. In the late 1980's events such as the
Stalker affair and allegations of collusion between elements of the security
forces and Loyalist paramilitaries cried out for independent investigation
but the then government offered only inquiries by senior police officers.26
Given that SACHR had no powers to compel the production of witnesses or
documents any investigation by it into such matters would likely have run
into substantial obstacles. However an effort to try to do something to
get to the bottom of such matters might well have produced some response
by the authorities and would at least have advanced SACHR's claims to independence.
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