Brian Feeney: Sooner UN’s racism rapporteur visits north the better

The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) published its latest report on August 23. It expresses a number of concerns and makes recommendations about human rights and racism in the north.

It also reminds the UK Government that, by ratifying the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, it has undertaken the obligation to ensure that its provisions are implemented effectively in all territories for which it is responsible. Hmm.

In the north it falls short in a number of areas.

CERD expresses concern at the failure by the Northern Ireland Executive to implement the Racial Equality Strategy 2015–2025. Declan Owens, the NI human rights officer with Rights & Security International, who attended the CERD meeting in Geneva, said: “As the committee recommended, it is imperative that the Northern Ireland Executive expedites a renewed Racial Equality Strategy. Its absence has directly contributed to the circumstances which manifested in the racist riots and attacks on ethnic minorities in early August.”

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Owens met the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Racism and recommended a visit to Ireland including the north. They’ve visited the UK within the last decade but have not visited Ireland since 1995. Might be an eye-opener.

CERD is also concerned at the failure to adopt a bill of rights in the north despite the terms of the Good Friday Agreement 26 years ago.

The committee also specifically recommended that the UK, “particularly the government of NI, adopt robust measures to prevent and combat paramilitary racist violence and intimidation against ethnic minorities and migrants, systematically collect information on these acts of intimidation, and ensure that cases of paramilitary racist violence and intimidation are promptly and effectively investigated, prosecuted and punished”. Huh.

There’s much more, including criticism of Border Force racial profiling of people travelling between the north and UK, misuse of stop and search powers, and an overall lack of adequate financial resources to implement effectively the provisions of the convention the UK has ratified.

So what chance of any of CERD’s recommendations being implemented? Very little.

The main reason there’ll be no progress is the DUP and the cowardice and connivance of the UUP who row in behind the DUP’s hostility.

Secondly, there is the gutless attitude of the DUP towards loyalist paramilitary gangsters. Recall Edwin Poots’s pathetic description of the UDA following accusations of involvement in recent violence in south Belfast: “an old men’s club”. So he disagrees with the police and the evidence of people’s eyes?

If he doesn’t know they have an iron grip on loyalist communities, maybe it’s because he lives miles away on a farm. No loyalist gangsters in Sandy Row or the Village, eh? No, they’re all ‘transitioning’.

Give us a break. After 30 years? Transitioning means living high on the hog on public money supplied by the executive’s scandalous Social Investment Fund while carrying on drug dealing, loan sharking, intimidation and protection rackets.

First and foremost, however, the DUP oppose human rights and equality legislation because they think they amount to a republican plot. Absurdly, they believe that equality of status and parity of esteem enshrined in legislation means fewer rights for unionists. Thus they object to any manifestation of Irishness as a corresponding diminution of Britishness, whatever that is nowadays.

Taking their cue from the language of DUP public representatives, supporters extend this hostility to manifestations of Muslim culture and religion. Consistently the DUP have blocked any meaningful incitement to hatred legislation. Therefore there’ll be no progress from the assembly.

That’s only one dimension, however. The NIO has also consistently undermined progress in human rights by disgracefully underfunding the NI Human Rights Commission (NIHRC).

The Conservatives cut its budget by 25% as soon as they came in. They reduced staffing from 32 to a dozen. NIHRC was limping along on a budget of less than £1.7 million. The combined effect was to prevent NIHRC carrying out its statutory duties, especially in litigation, damaging its credibility.

A hopeful sign is that last September, following a review, the British government agreed to ‘an exceptional uplift’ in NIHRC’s budget. We’ll see what effect this might have, but it won’t be immediate.

It also remains to be seen whether Starmer’s government will be any more human rights-friendly than the Conservatives. CERD criticised the UK’s draconian anti-protest legislation. It will be instructive to see how much, if any of it, Starmer repeals, for he is the most right-wing, authoritarian Labour prime minister there’s ever been.

The sooner the UN Rapporteur visits the north the better.

The DUP oppose human rights and equality legislation because they think they amount to a republican plot. Absurdly, they believe that equality of status and parity of esteem enshrined in legislation means fewer rights for unionists