Submission to the Committee of Ministers in relation to the supervision of the cases concerning the action of the security forces in Northern Ireland (January 2023)
Our latest submission to the Committee of Ministers was drafted for consideration at the upcoming 1459th meeting of the Ministers’ Deputies (in March 2023). It focuses on critiquing recent amendments to the deeply flawed Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill. This bill has continued to progress through the UK Parliament despite significant opposition to it from within Northern Ireland, as well as calls for the UK to withdraw the bill from UN officials, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, and the Northern Ireland Victims Commissioner.
Download the submission here. A later addendum to the submission, drafted in February 2023, is available here.
What is the Committee of Ministers?
The Committee of Ministers is the decision-making body of Europe’s leading human rights organisation, the Council of Europe. Its functions include examining the execution of judgments made by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in a series of cases in which states have been found to have committed human rights violations.
CAJ regularly makes submissions the Committee of Ministers on the ‘McKerr group of cases’ concerning the actions of the security forces in the 1980s and 1990s in Northern Ireland.