8. Memorandum from the Committee on
the Administration of Justice
I am afraid that for a variety of unavoidable
reasons, the Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ)
has not been able to respond in time to your call for evidence
with regard to your forthcoming inquiry into the Convention on
the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, and CERD's
Concluding Observations (deadline 30 November 2004).
However, in the event that it is not too late
to be of some assistance to the Committee in its work, we note
a number of issues below that we assume will be addressed in the
course of the inquiry. If CAJ or others can provide further information
on the points below, please feel free to come back and request
additional materials. We will also copy our letter to others to
ensure that they are aware of your inquiry and have already made
submissions.
1. CAJ welcomes the scrutiny offered by
the United Nations via CERD and welcomes the various recommendations,
most of which have a direct and immediate relevance to concerns
in Northern Ireland. We would in particular welcome the recommendation
to the UK government to incorporate the Convention, and CAJ has
serious concerns about the extent to which the recent government
review of its international human rights commitments adequately
addressed CERD's concerns in this regard.
2. The level of racial prejudice and racial
attacks seems to have risen dramatically in Northern Ireland.
While we accept the importance of media coverage of same, and
welcome the decision of the Press Complaints Commission to visit
Northern Ireland in Spring next year to inform people in Northern
Ireland about its work, CAJ doubts that media coverage is the
major concern. CAJ welcomes the requirement on the State Party
to include more information on racial offences in its next report
to the UN, and welcomes the gathering of official information
(albeit belatedly with regard to Northern Ireland) which will
allow for this information to be provided by government. CAJ is
not certain that the monitoring arrangements will in the very
near future allow the authorities to trace racial offences right
through the criminal justice system, as CERD recommends. It is
clearly vital to learn where, if anywhere, failures at different
stages of the criminal justice system prevent the proper detection
and prosecution of racist crime. CAJ believes it would be very
helpful if the Joint Committee on Human Rights requested detailed
information on this point and it may indeed be useful to draw
on some of the material submitted to the Northern Ireland Affairs
Committee in the course of their inquiry into hate crime (which
clearly also included race hate crime).
3. There is documented evidence of people
of different racial backgrounds facing individual and institutionalised
discrimination when in detention in Northern Ireland. The fact
that Northern Ireland detains asylum seekers in prison also has
implications for the UK's compliance with CERD.
4. CERD raised questions about the Anti-Terrorism
Crime and Security Act; the Joint Committee will want to study
the impact of the legislation and may find it helpful to draw
upon the recommendations made regarding this legislation by the
UN Committee Against Torture when they very recently examined
the UK.
5. As noted earlier (point 2), the recording
by the police of racist attacks is relatively new. We are unaware
of the timetable envisaged for the recording of "stop and
search" operations and their impact, differentiated on community
and racial grounds. The Joint Committee on Human Rights might
want to explore this in some detail.
6. CAJ would draw the attention of the Joint
Committee to the recently issued Proposal for a Draft Unauthorised
Encampments (NI) Order 2004. It is our belief that this draft
legislation flouts the Human Rights Act and seeks to criminalise
the nomadic culture of Irish Travellers. We will be communicating
this to the Department of Social Development, but it is very timely
that the Joint Committee is looking at UK's compliance with CERD's
recommendations. It is our strong contention that this legislation
directly discriminates against Travellers and therefore runs entirely
counter to the recommendation (see paragraph 23) that "the
State Party adopt national strategies and programmes with a view
to improving the situation of the Roma/Gypsies/Travellers against
discrimination by state bodies, persons or organisations".
It would be very important that the Joint Committee take the opportunity
of this inquiry to indicate its strong disapproval of this legislation,
which runs entirely counter to the spirit and provisions of the
Convention itself.
I hope that these brief remarks have been of
some use and, as noted above, I will copy this letter and details
of your inquiry to a number of groups here in Northern Ireland
(NICEM, CWA, Traveller Movement, MCRC, Refugee Action Group, AI,
the Law Centre and others) to ensure that they are all aware of
your current programme of work.
3 December 2004
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