Human rights in Northern Ireland in 2011

2011 was a relatively quiet year in Northern Ireland as far as developments in human rights law are concerned. The Northern Ireland Assembly did enact at least five Acts that have a human rights dimension to them, but there was little UK-wide legislation to speak of. Conversely, there were very few court decisions within Northern Ireland of any significance, whereas at the level of the UK Supreme Court there were at least 20 decisions that impacted on the protection of human rights in some way. Little emerged from the European Court of Human Rights that directly affected the law within Northern Ireland, and not much was said about Northern Ireland by UN or Council of Europe treaty-monitoring bodies.

On the research and investigation front, several useful reports were issued by watchdog bodies such as the Criminal Justice Inspectorate, the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland, the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and the Prisoner Ombudsman.