The safeguarding of the North’s human rights standards in the Belfast Agreement was copper-fastened in the Brexit deal, but repeated suggestions that the UK might withdraw from the European Court of Human Rights have caused alarm with human rights groups. “I have been consistently clear that the commitments in the Belfast Agreement should be interpreted as they were always intended, and not expanded to cover issues like illegal migration,” he insists, like Boris Johnson, retrospectively reinterpreting the agreement. Irish and British cases now before the domestic courts will lean on similar arguments to challenge government failures on the issue. The EU has insisted that if the UK withdraws it would terminate this part of the agreement, effectively stopping, for example, extradition of criminal suspects to face trial in the UK. A knee-jerk nationalist rejection of this “foreign court” by the UK would set a terrible example to autocracies, undermining an important pillar of the universalist defence of human rights.

Source: The Times May 18, 2024 15:52 UTC