Human rights in Northern Ireland in 2013

To facilitate comparison, this report has been structured in a similar way to that used for the 2012 report. It also draws upon the same sources, but gives even greater prominence to case law since it is not as well covered in the review of human rights for 2013, which is already to be found in the ‘Annual Statement’ of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission.

Many outside observers assume that, because the level of politically motivated violence has dramatically decreased in Northern Ireland in recent years, the environment within which further progress can be made on human rights issues there is very favourable. In fact, partly on account of the mandatory power-sharing arrangements put in place under the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement of 1998 and the St Andrews Agreement of 2006, and particularly ever since the two political parties which were previously seen as representing the more extreme elements of unionism and nationalism gained the electoral upper hand within each of their respective communities in 2007, the chances of securing cross-community consensus on the way forward on human rights issues are not high.