The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission
by Stephen Livingstone
In 1987 SACHR commissioned a report on its own powers and effectiveness. The authors of the report agreed that it had produced reports of high quality and maintained its impartiality.27 However they also felt that it was not a strong force to be reckoned with in Northern Ireland, that it had a low public profile and had not adopted a campaigning attitude. The lack of a power to be involved with individual complaints was seen as especially detrimental to its effectiveness.28 Government rejected SACHR's requests for increased powers and the repetition of SACHR's calls for a revised remit in its annual reports became increasingly ritualistic.29 The Commission never systematically evaluated its own effectiveness30 but by the mid 1990's it was clear that whatever it had achieved concerns as to human rights violations remained strong in Northern Ireland. Indeed if anything while the scale of such violations may have decreased since the early 1970s the level of international interest had grown significantly. The European Court of Human Rights, U.N. Institutions and international human rights NGOs were all taking an increasingly engaged and critical interest in human rights in Northern Ireland.31 Moreover human rights NGOs within Northern Ireland and agencies such as SACHR have made increasing reference to the importance of compliance with international standards in the design of laws and institutions affecting human rights in Northern Ireland. By these international standards SACHR fell well short of an adequate national institution for the protection of human rights. Moreover there were already examples within Northern Ireland of more effective bodies working in the area.
C. Anti-Discrimination Commissions in Northern Ireland
Although SACHR was charged with the task of advising government on the law relating to discrimination on the grounds of religion and political opinion it was not the only, or indeed the most important body acting in this area. In 1976 the Fair Employment (Northern Ireland) Act, passed to prohibit discrimination on grounds of religion or political opinion in employment, created the Fair Employment Agency (FEA). Initially this regulatory agency was given the task of receiving and resolving complaints of discrimination in employment as well as advising employers on their obligations under the legislation and conducting investigations into alleged patterns of discrimination. However its functions were substantially changed and the agency renamed the Fair Employment Commission (FEC) with the passing of the Fair Employment (Northern Ireland) Act 1989. A key feature of these changes was that the FEC lost the power to make adjudications on claims of discrimination and instead was given the role of assisting individual applicants in bringing their complaints before newly created Fair Employment Tribunals.32 This change was foreshadowed by a number of reports, including SACHR'S review of the law on religious discrimination, which indicated that the FEA had found it difficult to combine its adjudication role with its enforcement powers, to the detriment of combating discrimination effectively.33 Too often the FEA appeared anxious to resolve cases through pressure on both sides to conciliate, rather than seeking to establish precedents whose impact would reach beyond the individual case. The 1989 legislation put the emphasis more on ensuring employers compliance with their legal obligations not to discriminate and cast the FEC much more clearly in the role of an agency charged with securing such compliance. In addition to its power to assist individual applicants the Commission was also given enhanced powers to conduct investigations into employers where a significant imbalance of representation from one community was evident.34 Like SACHR the FEC is a multi member and part time Commission. Unlike SACHR, however, it also has a full time Chief Executive and a staff recruited by the Commission itself. The budget and staff of the FEC is also considerably larger than that of SACHR.
The structure of the FEC is replicated in the Equal Opportunities Commission for Northern Ireland (EOC-NI), which was established by the Sex Discrimination (Northern Ireland) Order 1976.35 The EOC-NI also has power to assist applicants alleging sex discrimination36 and to conduct investigations. Like the FEC it has a number of part-time commissioners who oversee the work of a staff appointed directly by the Commission.
Therefore by the early 1990s there were clearly alternative models available
within Northern Ireland as to what a human rights commission should look
like.37 The power to assist litigation, conduct investigations and appoint
one's own staff were central features of this alternative. There was also
evidence that agencies with these powers were better known than those without.
In a 1989 study, conducted as part of SACHR's research into public attitudes
for its discrimination law review, over 80% of respondents indicated awareness
of the FEA and 66% of the EOC as against just 50% for SACHR.38 |
