Fourteen years after the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement set in place the groundwork for a future Bill of Rights, the people of Northern Ireland continue to wait. Yesterday, Professor Colin Harvey, as part of a UU Transitional Justice Institute panel discussion on the Bill of Rights debate, likened the situation to Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Certainly there is more than a hint of the absurd regarding the way in which the long awaited Bill
of Rights has been delayed by the political leadership both at Stormont and Westminster in spite of the continued strong support for a Bill of Rights from civil society. Harvey, along with his fellow panellist Professor Michael O’ Flaherty (Chief Commissioner at the NI Human Rights Commission) and panel chair, former Chief Commissioner of the Human Rights Commission, Monica McWilliams, emphasised the significant role that civil society has played from the nascent days of the Bill of Rights campaign, and the concurrent lack of political agreement that has accompanied it.
The 1998 Good Friday/Belfast Agreement established the Human
Rights Commission for Northern Ireland, which in turn was invited to consult
and advise on the scope of a Bill of Rights that would “reflect the particular
circumstances of Northern Ireland”. As Michael O’Flaherty pointed out, in a
post-conflict society such as Northern Ireland, whose particular circumstances
include a history rife with the violation of rights civil, political as well as
economic, social and cultural, people need “copperfastened guarantees that
their rights will be honoured”.
It remains, Monica McWilliams said yesterday, a source of
great pride for the Commission that from these first steps their consultation
was done by listening to civic society. There followed further consultations
and the setting up of the Bill of Rights Forum in 2006. Following from this, in
2008 the Human Rights Commission submitted their 28 recommendations to the NIO,
which included Economic, Social and Cultural (ESC) rights. The NIO’s response roundly
ignored the Commission’s advice and instead proposed only two rights – the right
to vote and stand for political office, and the right to identify as Irish, British
or both. This 2009 response was described by yesterday’s panel as variously “a
disgrace” and “Insulting [and] disgraceful”.
Since the 2009 response the lack of political will to push
the Bill of Rights process forward in the face of public support for one has
remained the major issue. A 2010 public consultation by the Human Rights
Consortium produced an unprecedented response, with over 34, 000 members of the
public in support of a strong and inclusive Bill of Rights. In 2011, the
Consortium initiated an independent poll, which indicated cross-party support
of more than 83% for a Bill of Rights. Michael O’Flaherty, reflecting on the
disparity between what civic society is calling for and the political response
being given in return, said that there has been a fundamental breakdown of
politics in Northern Ireland, with constituents needs going unrecognised. Even those
who use “warm rhetorical language” regarding a Bill of Rights have failed,
according to Colin Harvey, to use the issue as a political deal-breaker.
Yesterday’s discussion was ultimately a reminder of the continued
public support for a Bill of Rights and of the continued lack of political will
to ensure this happens. Colin Harvey described the “promised Bill of Rights
process” aspect of the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement as the “real meat of the
enhanced Human Rights process that was promised” but which has never arrived
and asked that we should collectively be troubled by the continued lack of
progress on this. Most troubling, perhaps, is that many people in Northern
Ireland, having seen the public response to the different consultations now
assume that a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland in fact exists. And so the
need to continue to raise awareness and the need for civil society to continue
to mobilise to lobby their politicians continues. To conclude, we can return to
Beckett and the futile wait for Godot and the lines “Let us do something, while
we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed […] Let us make the
most of it, before it is too late!”