So, Ireland, led by Justice Minister Alan Shatter (pictured) has appeared before the UN Human Rights Council to 
be advised on how to ‘improve’ our human rights record, and we have accepted some of what the Council members suggested to us, taken other recommendations under advisement, and rejected a number of others.
One of the more dubious recommendations we have accepted came from the Mexican representative who said we ought to educate boys and girls about contraception. That is a minimalistic interpretation of what was recommended because a broader interpretation of the recommendation would seem to suggest we have also agreed to give pre-teens access to contraception as well as information.
The Mexican recommendation asked us to, “Ensure the national availability and accessibility to contraceptive services and methods, including through the dissemination of information and education to boys, girls and adolescents taking into account prevention of discrimination based on geographic (sic), status, disability or migrant status”.
Note the distinction the recommendation makes between “boys and girls” and “adolescents”. This makes clear the “boys and girls” it has in mind are pre-adolescent so there is no way the Government can claim the Mexican representative had in mind adolescent teenagers when it accepted this recommendation.
Just how young should the boys and girls be? This isn’t clear. It could be 12, it could be 8, or it could be younger still.
Also, is the minimal or maximal interpretation of the Mexican recommendation the correct one? How will the Government interpret it? Presumably it won’t want to make contraception available to anyone below the age of the consent because that would only facilitate and implicitly condone breaking the law regarding the age of consent. But who knows?
In addition, the Government has said it will consider two other very worrying recommendations by members of the UN Human Rights Council.
One is that we should change the constitutional definition of the family, and the other is what we should amend Section 37 of the Employment Equality Act which protects the rights of religious employers and has been declared constitutional by our Supreme Court.
Early next year the Labour-inspired ‘Constitutional Convention’ is to begin. Everything will be up for grabs, including the provisions of the Constitution concerning the family and religious freedom.
If Labour gets its way one thing is for sure; we will end up with a Constitution much more to the liking of the UN Human Rights Council and overall, that would be a very bad thing.