Make Our Future Fair

Northern Ireland has come through a lot. Through a divided past where communities struggled to live side by side. Through discrimination and inequalities. Through the death and destruction of the conflict and the suffering of all communities. Through the efforts of all people to reject violence and move towards the path to peace. Through painful negotiations and the compromises that were made.  And towards a new Agreement and a new system of governance.

Since that time, we have struggled on together to build a new society. One that moved away from the divisions of the past and embraced a new way of living together. But conscious of the fact that many divisions still existed in our society these new institutions were supposed to establish a series of protections that ensured that everyone was treated equally and that the new institutions could function effectively. Chief among these was the concept of a Bill of Rights.

Proposals to have a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland have been around for decades and all the main local political parties at one stage or another have called for its introduction.   In calling for a Bill of Rights, each of these parties was reflecting on the history or circumstances of Northern Ireland and looking for a device to secure rights moving into the future.

During the negotiations that lead to the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement civil society called for any new political institutions or system of governance for Northern Ireland to have human rights embedded within its foundation and operation. The Agreement in turn included provision for a new Bill of Rights and in 2008 the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission submitted its advice to the UK Government on what that Bill of Rights should look like.

Unfortunately, since that point there has been no delivery of our Bill of Rights because of lack of political agreement locally and the UK Government’s resistance to taking forward this important element of our peace process.

The result has been that since its creation the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive have found it very difficult to reach consensus on many fundamental human rights and equality issues. This in turn has created stalemate on rights at Stormont, many groups and issues go unprotected and Northern Ireland continues to fall behind the human rights standards being advanced in the rest of the United Kingdom.

A Bill of Rights is not a complicated proposition. It is a way of identifying the things that are most important to us in our society. Instead of hoping or requesting that our elected representatives, public authorities, or civil servants would protect those priorities, a Bill of Rights would instead place a legal duty on all of those groups to try to defend and implement them.

Many of the elements of our lives that we take for granted are not currently protected as human rights. Things like healthcare, adequate standards of living and adequate accommodation all have unrelated bits of legislation that deal with standards or services for those areas, but none are currently protected as rights.

If something is established as a right it means that there is a mechanism to hold Government to account if it fails to protect or work towards delivering those standards. The absence of such rights currently mean that it is very difficult for individuals to seek redress for the long-term failures to deal with things like the underfunding of mental health services, the barriers to the provision of Special Educational Needs or inadequate prioritization of groups that should be targeted for additional support. Issues like the provision of housing in North Belfast for people from a catholic background or the educational under attainment of working-class protestant boys are failures that can remain unchallenged and unchanged for years.

Establishing a Bill of Rights is a way of setting and advancing that list of priorities.

It does not solve all our problems, but it does set a responsibility on Government to begin to put in place the proper structures, programmes and supports necessary to progress these priorities.

It continues to ensure that politicians and government are the primary agents of change and the defenders of human rights, but also should include the safety net of having a mechanism for holding them to account should they fail to progress those duties.

This renewed campaign is about ensuring that we have a proper set of priorities for our society and that they have the added protection of being protected as human rights. It is about delivering a Bill of Rights.

Fundamentally it is about making our future fair.

Looking to the Future it is very clear that we still need many of the same protections and guarantees that we strived to achieve in that original vision of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement. We need an enhanced human rights framework that is embedded in the institutions and our system of government in Northern Ireland.

Human rights are about providing our decision makers with the duties and powers to be able to uphold the things we hold most dearly in our society. Things like fairness, justice, freedom and tolerance. We want to give them the tools and the direction to be able to advance and protect those things on our behalf. A Bill of Rights would enable our elected representatives to make decisions that were informed by the best international standards. That were based on objective criteria and best practice. That sat above party political commitments or individual community perspectives.

But to turn rights into reality you need legislation. We have fallen well behind our neighbours in the rest of the UK and are failing to meet our international obligations as well. So, we need not just one human rights reform but a whole set of updates and new standards. That’s where a Bill of Rights comes in.

Recent experiences have shown that some of the most vital things that we take for granted like healthcare, education, standards of living and basic accommodation can all be placed in danger once bad times hit. This has proven particularly true for some of the most vulnerable in our community as existing inequalities have been made even deeper.

No Bill of Rights or human rights legislation could possibly deal with all the challenges of a crisis or the day-to-day decisions that the Government needs to make in such circumstances. But it would very clearly help the Government identify the priority rights that needed protected as a crisis unfolded and gives them the authority to frame decision making around the protection of those rights.

Developing a Bill of Rights in legislation would complete this outstanding commitment from the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement but it would also just be the first step on achieving a society that was rooted in and driven by human rights. We need to Make Our Future Fair and to do that we need to deliver a Bill of Rights.

That’s why we need to Make Our Future Fair, that’s why we need a Bill of Rights and that’s why YOU need to Take Action and help us to make it happen!