Dr Martin Mansergh“It is a flaw in much human rights practice and thinking to focus accountability exclusively on States”, writes Martin Mansergh
At the present time, Ireland still has a strong pro-life culture in the broadest meaning of that term and a genuine commitment to human rights, even if reality often falls well short of ideals.
Like other countries, we have a huge problem understanding, let alone getting to grips with, a culture that glorifies death and scorns human rights. Scarcely a day goes by without the report of dozens of deaths somewhere in the world caused by car bombs, suicide bombs, or other murderous and most often indiscriminate attacks on civilians, in the last case not always linked to a political cause.
The impact is magnified here, when they occur with increasing frequency in countries that we are close to. What all such attacks have in common is that their perpetrators are trying to make a statement that will attract the attention of the world, whether in favour of a cause or sometimes to highlight a private grievance. Thankfully, they do not always succeed.
In combating this rampant evil, it is easy to become hysterical or to become receptive to the simple solutions of demagogues.
To produce a reaction that will both divide relatively stable and successful societies and also encourage new recruits is part of the effect that the crude attacks on fundamental human values are designed to achieve.
There is little doubt that they are contributing to strains on political and social cohesion, primarily by casting doubt on the wisdom of liberal immigration policies and freedom of movement within large areas.
The EU has experienced a year-long crisis of confidence that has had a profound effect on its politics. The Brexit referendum was dominated not by economics, but by immigration. How free access to markets is to be maintained without free movement of labour is not at all clear. The spectre of a reintroduction of border controls in Ireland hangs over the negotiations. With the best will in the world, a benign outcome is far from assured.
It is progress of a sort that there is now a strong attachment to an Ireland free of obvious physical borders at the border, just as in much of continental Europe, but is this something that will only have been short-lived? While there has been loose talk of border polls, the reality of Brexit will be a strengthening of the border and the creation of a new impediment to any future united Ireland, as the two parts of Ireland, no longer together part of a European single market, are set on a course that may increasingly diverge.
It remains to be seen whether the EU itself without Britain becomes more or less cohesive. It is hard to see how a major country leaving the EU is going to help Europe find a convincing and co-ordinated response to a growing threat from international terrorism.
While the Republic has a capacity to pull together, especially in a sudden crisis, a weak Government in terms of its position in the Dáil, with little capacity to take necessary difficult decisions, should they arise, or to legislate, puts us in a vulnerable situation. There are already signs that the much-vaunted ‘new politics’ is encountering the same cynicism as the ‘democratic revolution’ that ushered in the last Dáil in 2011.
Human rights, and especially the right to life, are, most of us believe, best secured in a democratic society. Strictly authoritarian countries have many drawbacks, but few situations are worse than prolonged anarchy and civil war, as rival factions fight it out at the expense of any semblance of normal civilian life, sometimes spawning lethal groups. The most culpable aspect of the Iraq war was not just its dubious motivation and justification, but the woeful preparation for rebuilding the country afterwards, as if the emergence of a new democratic order was virtually guaranteed. A good thing about the Chilcot Report is that it will make leaders more careful about the taking of future decisions on war or peace, if rigorous accountability can be anticipated, when things go wrong. Personally, I find it sad that the excellent achievements of Tony Blair with regard to peace in Northern Ireland should be so completely overshadowed by the war in Iraq.
Obligations
It is a flaw in much human rights practice and thinking to focus accountability exclusively on States. Does that mean that paramilitary organisations which claim to be States and arrogate to themselves powers that ordinarily belong only to States are exempt from any human rights obligations that by definition they have never signed up to?
In practice, they are often operating to norms that have long since been discarded and are now banned. In an Irish context, capital punishment ceased in the 1950s, and is incompatible with both the European Convention on Human Rights and EU membership.
Corporal punishment is also now banned. States can rightly be impugned, for example, for engaging in torture or premeditated shoot to kill actions. Should not the same opprobrium, abusing human rights, over and above the sanctions of the criminal law, apply to any organisation claiming powers of jurisdiction and that kills and tortures people without trial?
No genuine religion today aspires to become a universal theocracy. Nor does it authorise young zealots to kill and destroy in its name.
In every society, people enjoy rights created or recognised in law. The point of having national independence and democracy, or even devolution, is to frame laws that correspond as nearly as possible to the needs and wishes of the people.
This need not be exclusive of common laws and standards freely adopted to enhance their impact by virtue of membership of international organizations. There is a special category of fundamental rights inscribed as constitutional or human rights.
There is a tendency to want to extend the number of such rights, but they need to be core ones, which do not pre-empt the division of resources appropriate to parliamentary decision, or dilute the distinction between what is fundamental and what is not.