Human rights champion Chris Sidoti tells Dan Keenanwhy Northern Ireland needs a bill of rights, as the DUP tables a motion questioning it
Today, the Northern Assembly will discuss a DUP motion warning of the dangers of a "flawed" bill of rights being foisted on Northern Ireland.
However, Chris Sidoti, chairman of the Bill of Rights Forum in the North, recently received welcome support for his attempt to develop the human rights culture of Northern Ireland, a project which has aroused suspicions in some quarters.
In Belfast, former South African minister and former head of the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement Prof Kader Asmal said that establishing a bill of rights was a key element of strengthening the new political dispensation.
Recently, too, as part of dealing with suspicions about the necessity for a bill of rights, Mr Sidoti welcomed an extra £100,000 of public money to extend his forum's outreach programme.
Mr Sidoti, an Australian human rights expert, said that the allocation would enable two additional outreach workers to encourage engagement, especially from the unionist community, some of whom have particular misgivings about whether the North really needs a bill of rights.
Mr Sidoti told The Irish Timesthat he understood why many unionists saw the push for a bill of rights for Northern Ireland as being more in tune with nationalist concerns. Pointing to the origins of nationalist involvement with the civil rights campaign of the late 1960s, he said that unionist suspicions of the agenda were "a hangover, a legacy of the Troubles".
He explained that the new money provided a great chance to address that. "It's a modest amount, but we have only a little time [six months], and so it will make a big difference. We have the capacity now to reach out to a larger number of people and involve groups within this discussion which have not been involved or involved adequately."
Mr Sidoti chairs a commission of 28 people from all backgrounds and he is confident that it can agree a set of recommendations on a bill of rights which will underpin human dignity in law and set the standard for Britain and the Republic. His tight deadline is next March.
All those around the table - the politicians and those drawn from wider society - are in agreement on two major fundamentals, he says. "Principally, that there is a need for a bill of rights - that was agreed at the first meeting. The second is that any bill of rights for Northern Ireland should not undercut or be inconsistent with the protections of international law or domestic law."
He admits that nationalists in general want a grand-scale bill, which is all-inclusive, while others, mostly unionists, prefer a more modest, limited model. "The question is where do those views meet? I don't set out with an expectation that these will be easily resolved."
He says that he is sufficiently committed to the project to want to spend the best part of a year in Belfast sorting out local disagreements. "I'm a strong supporter of a bill of rights for anywhere, not just for Northern Ireland. Human rights require strong protection in domestic law. I am not and never have been of the view that the common law is enough to protect us - it's not.
"For Northern Ireland, the experience of other societies coming out of periods of conflict is that a bill of rights can and does play an important role as part of the transition process. It can be one part by which the reconstruction is undertaken."
He recognises the view of many that Northern Ireland stands apart from every other conflict and cannot be fairly compared, but then offers his own perspective: "Every society is unique, which means that Northern Ireland is not unique. Societies are - every single one - generally unique.
"I think there's a view in Northern Ireland that this place is uniquely unique. There are commonalities, however. We should be ready to learn from the experiences of others and build on them while not doing so uncritically. That's part of the challenge here - to look to the outside world while at the same time recognising that there is a particular context here."
He is confident that the ongoing work in Belfast will influence both London and Dublin.
"Looking east and south there are implications. The new prime minister [Gordon Brown] has expressed much stronger interest in a bill of rights than his predecessor did. That immediately means that what we are doing here can have UK-wide implications. The level of protection of rights in the Irish Constitution is extremely limited. One of the provisions of the Good Friday agreement relating to a bill of rights also talked about a charter of rights for the island of Ireland. So the work we are doing here will have implications for the island of Ireland as a whole."