Promoting Justice /
Protecting Rights
The freedoms of expression and assembly are closely related and represent one of the basic pillars of a democratic society. These freedoms are frequently amongst the prime targets of authoritarian or populist governments and are routinely denied in many countries across the world.
At its broadest, the concept of contemporary accountability refers to the “guarantees of non-recurrence” of major human rights violations established following a conflict. It involves many areas of society but with the common aim of establishing a fair and just system in which all people can have trust and confidence.
Equality is a basic human right and in many ways can be seen as underpinning all others. For convenience we often use the phrase “human rights and equality,” but such is the concept’s fundamental character that we should say “human rights including equality” or perhaps “equality and all other human rights.”
This area of work was an unplanned addition to our priorities in 2016. Although we regarded the threatened repeal of the Human Rights Act and its replacement with a “British” Bill of Rights of unknown content as a threat both to human rights in general and the Belfast Good Friday Agreement in particular.
CAJ has always based its policy stance on international human rights standards. These are contained in global and regional treaties and conventions (known as “hard law”) and in a plethora of standards, treaty body comments, committee of experts commentaries, reports by UN Special Rapporteurs and so on (known as “soft law”).