Select Committee on Foreign Affairs Appendices to the Minutes of Evidence


APPENDIX 15

Letter from Mr Michael Dun to the Clerk of the Committee on Annual Report on Human Rights, 26 October 1999

  You invite comments and I should like to take the opportunity to, yet again, lament the absence of attention that The Crown Dependencies receive with regard to International Treaties and Human Rights obligations in particular.

  For many years I have been trying to establish the most basic dialogue between The Foreign Office (or The Home Office) and myself with regard to reporting obligations (ILO, UN notably) and The Channel Islands and Isle of Man.

  I enclose a recent copy of yet another Home Office letter (dated 18th October and signed DPC Jones) which replies to my continuing attempts to discover when reports under ICCPR and ICESCR are to be considered by the UN and when it would be appropriate for NGO's to make comment.

  It will be appreciated that unless such information is made available to the public in The Islands then the reporting process can only be incomplete.

  For the Committee's further information I enclose a copy from The Appendices of The "Europe after Maastricht" report (1993)[1] in which I expressed similar views about the ignorance and confusion surrounding the application of international treaties to these Islands. This situation has not improved.

  It is significant that in Jersey there is no legislation in place to discourage discrimination of any kind and that the UK Government must be considered negligent with regard to its international obligation by failing to ensure that inhabitants of these territories enjoy the protections that are considered minimal in other places.


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