Ahead of Europe Day on 5 May, and on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the European Convention on Human Rights, Ireland has launched a series of three podcasts under the theme "The European Court of Human Rights: an Irish perspective" to highlight the history and impact of Ireland's key role in the development of the Convention.
In the first episode, prominent Irish human rights professionals set the scene from a historic perspective:
"Ireland was one of the founding members of the Council of Europe in 1949. In the late 1940s, if you think about the context, Ireland was still a fairly new state, and it was keen to have a presence on the international stage. In addition, considered one of the most important human-rights courts in the world, Ireland was one of a small number of countries which was involved in the drafting of the European Convention of Human Rights and the setting up of the corresponding court in the immediate post-war period," said Niamh Howlin. Associate Professor at the UCD Sutherland School of Law.
A country finding its feet
Back then, Ireland hadn't been invited to join the United Nations, and it was going to leave the British Commonwealth. The new Council of Europe was an opportunity for Ireland to take a role in building post-war Europe.
The Chief Justice of Ireland, Donal O'Donnell explains that the reason Ireland put so much effort into participating, was that it allowed Ireland to join what could be called "the A team":
"It was an attempt to build a structure of what would be a model of modern Western liberal democracies resistant against what had occurred in the 1930s. The Convention has, together with the European Union, slowed what might otherwise have been and perhaps inhibited and stopped a slide into autocracy in a number of European countries."
Over three episodes, the podcast series offers the opportunity to meet a dozen very significant figures in Irish human rights and in Ireland's European integration path, exploring topics such as individual and interstate cases, and how the European Convention became a cornerstone of the Good Friday Agreement, which brought an end to paramilitary violence in Northern Ireland.
The podcasts will also be available on ireland.ie
Ireland and the Council of Europe
Ireland and the European Court of Human Rights
