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Introduction by CAJ Director, Daniel Holder: It was a pleasure to take up the role of CAJ Director at the start of April, following the retirement of Brian Gormally and consequent recruitment process. CAJ continued under Brian’s stewardship until this point, and he was given a memorable send off in April with both a retirement party and a special dedicated issue of our newsletter Just News to mark his lifetime of activism, not just at CAJ, but before this as well. I started in CAJ as Deputy Director just shortly after Brian became Director and we worked together for over ten years. It is a great honour to take up the Director role, standing on the shoulders of all my illustrious predecessors.
I think it was Brian who coined the description of CAJ as a ‘think tank with teeth’ and we have continued to bite sharply over 2023, which was another busy year for CAJ with a continued stream of activity, not least over the UK Government’s legacy legislation. The last year was also, post-pandemic, a year of numerous CAJ events. As part of our joint policing project with the Irish Council of Civil Liberties (ICCL), we held a seminar on racial profiling in law enforcement and a conference on police surveillance north and south. Through the vehicle of the Equality Coalition, we also held two Stormont-based events with multi-party sponsorship, the first on tackling misogyny in the criminal law with Baroness Helena Kennedy; the second on the legal obligation on the NI Executive to adopt an anti-poverty strategy. We also held a digital rights seminar and two ‘constitutional conversations seminars’ as part of the LSE Gender, Justice and Security Hub. Among our events on legacy was a legal symposium in June that featured Robert Spano, former president of the European Court of Human Rights, as the keynote speaker. We also organised a seminar to look at impunity, both internationally and in Northern Ireland, which was held on the 50th anniversary of the Pinochet coup in Chile (11 September 2023).
Both events were held in Queen’s University, the latter with members of an international expert panel convened by the Human Rights Centre at the University of Oslo at the request of CAJ and the Pat Finucane Centre to report on the extent of impunity in relation to the Northern Ireland conflict. We also held events in partnership with our partners in the North West Migrants Forum on the ongoing issues of racial profiling and ‘hard borders’ faced by migrant communities in the border area, including a ‘townhall’ meeting in Dublin.
CAJ also continued to use strategic litigation – including with the support of our close partners in the PILS project. We progressed a number of legacy cases and a challenge relating to peace process safeguards and the rights of the Irish speakers as a linguistic minority. 2023 took place in the context of the Northern Ireland institutions (the NI Executive and Assembly) not sitting, again. Unlike the previous collapse in 2017, there was no official participatory process to feed into, such as the one that led to the New Decade New Approach deal that restored the institutions in 2020.
Work across our six priority areas has continued. These are Democratic Governance, Policing and Justice, Legacy of the Past, Confronting Prejudice, Increasing Equality, and Immigration. We also continued to be active in international networks and engagement, through FIDH, the European Implementation Network, and academic collaboration projects.
CAJ has enjoyed support with core funding from the Human Rights Fund in a funding cycle that continues until 2025. We have also received core support from the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. We continue to diversify our funding – in 2023 were delighted to secure a five year ‘backbone’ grant from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, which has allowed us to mainstream our post-Brexit migrant rights project previously supported by this Foundation into our core work. We also were pleased to receive three years core support from the AB Charitable Trust and a further project grant from the Legal Education Foundation (T:LEF). We also have secured programme support on a recuring basis from the UNISON campaign fund for our work with the Equality Coalition, which is co-convened by CAJ and UNISON. Additionally, we received support from the Community Foundations based in both parts of the island of Ireland for the cross-border policing work with ICCL, and from the Community Foundation NI (alone) for the work with the impunity panel. We also have collaborative international academic projects with the University of Bristol (on peacebuilding, NI, Lebanon and Colombia) and LSE (through the Gender Justice and Security Hub). Most recently we were delighted to secure a three year grant from Esmeé Fairbairn, which will allow us to formalise and grow our partnership work with the North West Migrants Forum. During this year, we were also supported by Unbound Philanthropies in a project to produce a model Hostile Environment (Northern Ireland) Repeal Bill.
We acknowledge support from all our funders, without which we could not continue our work.
CAJ has a small, but dedicated staff team as well as the Director. Roisín Brennan manages the office and finances; Robyn Scott handles communications and the Equality Coalition; Eliza Browning is our Policy Officer; Gemma McKeown our Solicitor; and Úna Boyd our Immigration Solicitor. We have also been supported by student volunteers in 2023, including two formal PhD placement students on legacy work, Damien Rea and Monica Pitt. During 2023, we engaged in some novel team building. While an exchange day with ICCL in Dublin was a more traditional mutual learning affair, the CAJ team also set sail on a 19th century boat out on Belfast Lough during the summer as part of a lottery-funded activity – all made it back to shore safely!
2024 will no doubt throw up the continued mix of big challenges and detailed micro battles on which CAJ thrives. We remain well prepared for what is to come.
Daniel Holder
Director
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