There are two major public policy objectives in Northern Ireland. One is the equality agenda designed to deliver the promise in the Good Friday Agreement of equality and parity of esteem for the two main communities and for members of other social and ethnic groups. The other is the Shared...

This paper examines the approach of the Irish courts to social and economic rights, and proposes using the equality doctrine to provide indirect protection for these rights. The papers draws on comparative material from Canada, South Africa, the US and the European convention on Human Rights to...

Human rights law proclaims that all persons are the same, and have the same rights. Yet this revolutionary claim, which has overturned political regimes and confounded conventions, has itself been criticised. The criticisms have often come from a non-legal disciplinary background - anthropology,...

The island of Ireland is host to two separate jurisdictions, a legacy of the partition of Ireland following the Irish War of Independence from 1919 to 1921. The history of the relationship between North and South has not always been a happy one. This chapter reviews the history of this...

This paper discusses human rights based budget work. It discusses what is meant by budget work, and identifies key principles and tools used in budget work. It concludes by outlining challenges to such work

Human rights have often been dominated by the contributions of lawyers and courts. Whilst lawyers and courts certainly have major contributions to make in this field, recently there has been more attention devoted to the contribution of other disciplines and other actors. One important example...

Increasingly we find that legislatures are considering human rights issues. This article looks at one area where legislative assemblies may offer a distinctive contribution to human rights protection, when exercising their historic role in matters of finance and budgets. The purpose of this...

This case study identifies the key human rights obligations (based on the International covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights, ICESCR) that are relevant to any analysis of funding for mental health services as an aspect of the realization of the right to health. It discusses these...

Submission to the Ad Hoc Committee on a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland. Summary: The Good Friday or Belfast Agreement 1998 envisaged reforms that would contribute to wider social and economic transformation, among these a Bill of Rights. Many of these reforms have not been delivered and...

This document identifies the human rights issues that are relevant to the development of an economic and social rights-based budget analysis methodology. It details the various analytical frameworks that have been employed by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and others to...