It seems that no sooner was Ireland declared the country that does most good for the world (according to the first “Good Country Index”, or GCI), than our human rights record was being lambasted by the UN, and newspaper columnists here were calling us a “misogynist state” and a place where “The Irish Constitution treats (all women) as vessels.”
Which is it? We can’t be both the best country in the world and a rights-violating renegade – and in truth we are neither. What both of these stories reveal is that the answer you get depends on how you ask the question – and who’s asking it.
In truth, Ireland’s human rights record is mixed. The Good Country Index rather overstates the case, and we deserve some of the criticism we got from the UN. But it’s fascinating to watch the Irish media report on the UN Human Rights Committee’s questions and statements in relation to Ireland as though the committee members were somehow infallible – and even more interesting to wonder why few of our media outlets seem to have consulted the international law that we’re supposedly in breach of.
In defence of the Good Country Index, it bases its rankings on identifiable sources of data. You can access each of its headings and find out the basis for their scores. Yes, some them look like an attempt to quantify the unquantifiable, and others are just weird (apparently one of the reasons Ireland ranks 7th in the world under the GCI’s Culture index is that we’re quite good at paying our dues to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization.) But anyone who goes to the website can see the metrics and judge the accuracy of the index for themselves.
But when it came to Ireland’s hearings at the human rights committee, our media weren’t that interested in facts. They mainly parroted the opinions of some of the committee members that we were in breach of human rights law – even when those opinions directly contradict… the text of said law.
Nowhere was this more obvious than in the case of abortion.
The UN Human Rights Committee assesses compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, one of two 1966 treaties that put into force the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
That treaty doesn’t mention abortion. At all (go ahead and Ctrl-F the document!). What’s more, a right to abortion is not found in any other international human rights legislation. What you do find is rather a lot of mentions of the unborn child. From Family and Life’s submission to the Human Rights Committee:
The unborn child, on the other hand, is recognised as a human rights subject by various international human rights law provisions: for example, Article 6(5) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, but also by Article 12(2) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the preamble to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 24(2)(d) of the UNCRC, and Article 2(d) of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
That contribution was called “breathtakingly arrogant” by Sir Nigel Rodley, the committee chair. Well, facts can be breathtaking things. Rodley was lauded in the Irish media for the following statement:
“…the recognition of the primary right to life of the woman who is an existent human being has to prevail over that of the unborn child and I can’t begin to understand by what belief system the priority would be given to the latter rather than the former.”
First of all, Rodley gives no indication that he’s understood the argument of his opponents. Nobody is suggesting that unborn children have a greater right to life than pregnant women – just an equal one.
But more importantly, Rodley’s opinion is just that. He can be as flabbergasted as he likes, but it doesn’t change the law. But would anyone relying on the Irish media coverage of the hearings have any way of knowing what the law actually says? Was there much reporting on the actual legislation or its content? Nope. And without that information, this whole discussion, and all the fulminating and indignation that’s accompanying it, is so much smoke in the wind.
When I first heard that Ireland had ranked number one on the Good Country Index, I laughed out loud. I laughed rather less when it became apparent that one self-funded independent policy advisor had provided more data to back up that conclusion than a whole UN committee did to back up theirs.
