Social care rights

Social care rights

• In 2019/20 students worked with Evgeny Shtorn of the Movement of Asylum Seekers in Ireland to research and advocate in relation to the ongoing human rights violations in the Direct Provision system.
  • The students created a project entitled ‘Ask About Direct Provision’, with a website and twitter feed during the General Election to create public awareness and pressure on candidates regarding the need to ensure human rights protection of asylum seekers. They spread public awareness about these activities through the media (for example here and here).
  • The group also contributed research and analysis regarding children’s rights violations in Direct Provision to the ICHR’s Shadow Report to the UN Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) in November 2019 and the ICHR’s NGO submission to the UN Committee Against Torture in January 2020. Two students made oral arguments to CERD while other students organised a live public screening in the ICHR of the CERD examination in Geneva.
  • The group’s largest piece of work was a research report entitled ‘Direct Provision’s Impact on Children: A Human Rights Analysis’. This 150-page report, with a foreword by Emily Logan, Adjunct Professor at the Irish Centre for Human Rights and former Ombudsman for Children and Chief Commissioner of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, was submitted to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC), influencing the CRC’s List of Issues Prior to Reporting. It was also published in autumn 2020 as a submission to the Minister for Children with accompanying public outreach and media activity (including Irish Examiner and Irish Independent reports).

• In 2020/21, again working with Evgeny Shtorn to respond to the priorities of the Movement of Asylum Seekers in Ireland, students published a 71-page research report entitled ‘Introducing Timelines into the Irish International Protection System: A Path Towards Accountability and Transparency: A Submission to the Minister for Justice’. The report, with a foreword by Professor Siobhán Mullally, recommended the insertion of statutory time-limits for decision-making into the International Protection Act 2015 which governs Ireland’s international protection system. The students’ submission and recommendations were reported by The Irish Times. The students further designed a one-page summary infographic and other public campaign-focused infographics to assist MASI in its ongoing advocacy.

• In 2021/22, students worked with Care Champions to research and inform Care Champions’ advocacy concerning human rights issues arising from people’s experiences in nursing homes and other institutional ‘care’ settings in Ireland during the Covid pandemic. The group wrote a Preliminary Research Report for Care Champions on human rights norms relevant to the treatment of people living in Irish nursing homes and their relatives during the Covid-19 pandemic. They also collected the testimonies of five bereaved relatives and analysed them and further interview excerpts provided by a postgraduate student of applied psychology at University College Cork by reference to human rights norms. Most significantly, the students co-authored a detailed submission to the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission requesting use of IHREC’s statutory power to initiate a human rights-based public inquiry. The submission was reported on in the Irish Times by Mark Hilliard in March 2023 and Suzanne Cahill in April 2023.