Human rights-based memorialisation

Human rights-based memorialisation

• In 2019/20 students worked with an array of activists and academics to create a website, openheartcitydublin.ie, that communicates and houses a collaborative project, Open Heart City, aiming to encourage and facilitate the envisioning and concrete design of national memorialisation regarding Ireland’s 20^th century history of systematic institutional, gender-based abuses. The students worked particularly closely with Master’s students of architecture in Queen’s University and University College Dublin to incorporate their work into the overall communication of the project. The NUIG students’ research, analysis and activism, which is displayed on the website, included a General Election communication campaign, seeking to highlight the need for truth-telling and memorialisation with candidates and to extract commitments from them; compilation of resources including a list of supports for survivors and research concerning Ireland’s 20^th century institutional and gender-based abuses; and explanation of international human rights law standards on memorialisation and truth-telling concerning gross and systematic human rights violations, and international practice in implementing such standards

• In 2020/21, in partnership with Mary Harney and Fionna Fox, first- and second-generation survivors, and the Clann Project, students published secondary school teaching materials to assist in the teaching of Ireland’s twentieth century institutional and family separation system and the human rights violations it caused. The materials, which are based on the students’ extensive research into Ireland’s 20^th century institutional and family separation abuses and comparative international examples of human rights-based teaching, include a guidebook for teachers, powerpoint presentations (both general and Galway-focused), lesson scripts, a student brochure, and an online database of further sources for students’ independent research. The students trialled their classroom materials with Transition Year students in Coláiste na Coiribe, Knocknacarra, in May 2021. The materials’ publication was covered in the Irish Examiner and by KFM. In 2022, with Mary Harney, the same students organised a one-day event entitled ‘Teaching the Dark History of Ireland’s Institutions: Engaging Educators and Policymakers’, covered in the media here.

• Also in 2020/21, with a coalition of affected people and academic researchers, Clinic student Erika Hayes co-authored an Oireachtas submission on the General Scheme of a Certain Institutional Burials (Authorised Interventions) Bill. The 61-page document, among other things, emphasised the importance of coronial inquests as an element of human rights-based accountability and reparation, and provided in-depth analysis of the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation findings concerning the deaths and burials which are, and are not, yet accounted for.

• In 2021/22, with Mary Harney, students published a seven-episode podcast series entitled ‘My Country Is My Prison’ to explore and raise public awareness of the continuing human rights violations arising from Ireland’s 20^th century institutional and family separation system. Interviewees included Dr Conor O’Mahony, Special Rapporteur on Child Protection to the Government of Ireland, and Elizabeth Coppin, litigant before the UN Committee Against Torture.

• In 2019/20 students worked with archivists in NUIG and Elizabeth Coppin, a survivor of a County Home, industrial school and three Magdalene Laundries, to create a digital repository of the papers in her case before the UN Committee against Torture. The students also drafted a website to accompany and explain the digital repository. These outputs are currently in draft form while the legalities and precise manner of publishing are finalised.