We welcome this guest post by Brian Gormally, Director of the Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ) Can HET be Article 2 Compliant? Questions for Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary Introduction In May Brice Dickson, Chair of the NI Policing Board’s Historical Enquiry Team (HET) Working Group, wrote to a number of interested parties […]
Category: Policing
‘Shopping for Peter’ and the question of which racist remarks constitute advocacy of hatred
On Saturday hundreds of people lined up outside Tescos in Belfast city centre clutching ‘I am shopping for Peter’ posters, in a creative anti-racist protest against the First Minister‘s assertion, among other matters, that he would only trust Muslims “to go down to the shop for me, to give me the right change…”. Peter Robinson […]
Covert Policing and Ensuring Accountability: Ten Years on from the Cory Collusion Inquiry Reports, where now?
CAJ in partnership with University of Ulster Transitional Justice Institute (TJI) will be hosting the following seminar on Tuesday 1 July 2014 Covert Policing and Ensuring Accountability: Ten Years on from the Cory Collusion Inquiry Reports, where now? Rooms 82A01 and 82A02 University of Ulster Belfast Campus, 9.30am-3pm Background information for the Covert Policing Seminar […]
Stop and Search: legal certainty and dodgy consultation outcomes, two judgements of broader note
Last week Justice Treacy delivered judgements in two judicial reviews relating to the use of emergency-type stop and search powers under the Justice and Security (Northern Ireland) Act 2007, which will be of broader interest to other policy areas too. The first judgement, related to the legal certainty test under human rights law, i.e. whether […]
An end to miscarriages of justice?
The above headline would be one usually welcomed by human rights activists here and throughout the world given the significance it could have: no more convictions on the basis of ‘confessions’ beaten out of suspects; an end to police corruption, an end to agent provocateurs fitting up persons, the list goes on. Yesterday however the […]
The Haass / O’Sullivan Proposed Agreement on parades and flags: analysis from a human rights perspective
CAJ made two submissions to the Haass process. The first (S419) related to advocating a single mechanism to deal with the legacy of the conflict. The other sets of issues dealt with by the Panel of Parties, including “Flags, symbols, emblems and related matters” and dealing with parades and protests, were dealt with in a […]
“North-South Irish Responses to Transnational Organised Crime”; Dissemination Conference; Friday 21st March 2014
The research team of the AHRC Project “North-South Irish Responses to Transnational Organised Crime” would like to invite you to our dissemination conference to be held at the University College Dublin on Friday, 21st March between 11 am and 4 p.m. The research team consists of Principal Investigator: Professor Tom Obokata, Research Fellow: Dr. Brian Payne, […]
Haass and the Past – how to judge success
December 30th – decision day for Northern Ireland’s politicians gathered at Dr Richard Haass’ round table, has finally arrived. It’s already proving to be a long one. Soon, it will be judgment day for the rest of us. It seems they have already accepted defeat on the flying of flags. So toxic has that issue […]
Mapping the Rollback
On December 9th, CAJ in collaboration with the Transitional Justice Institute, Ulster and the Human Rights Centre Queens University Belfast are pleased to invite you to the launch of the conference report ‘Mapping the Rollback – Human Rights Provisions of the Belfast / Good Friday Agreement 15 Years On’. The conference report covers CAJ’s ‘Mapping the […]
Why “Shoot to Kill” won’t go away
Rights NI is delighted to welcome this guest post from Professor Fionnuala Ni Aoláin. Professor Ní Aoláin is concurrently Associate Director at the University of Ulster’s Transitional Justice Institute in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and the Dorsey & Whitney Chair in Law at the University of Minnesota Law School. She is co-founder and associate director of the Transitional […]
Sectarian/racist expression and restricting parades to protect the rights of others: implications of Vona v Hungary
On 9 July 2013 the European Court of Human Rights issued its judgment in the case of Vona v Hungary relating to a supremacist organisation engaged in military-style assemblies. The authorities had ultimately dissolved the organisation following its attempt, blocked by police, to march through a street inhabited by Roma families. In the context of protecting […]
What does “National Security” actually mean?
The Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ) published a report in late 2012 entitled “The Policing You Don’t See”. It highlighted the ‘parallel justice system’ currently operating in Northern Ireland. This consists of a police force accountable to local mechanisms and another “force outside a force” responsible for national security issues, operating from within […]