IRELAND’S HUMAN RIGHTS RECORD: State looked the other way as citizens suffered

Last summer, the chair of the UN Human Rights Committee described Ireland’s human rights record, particularly in relation to women and children, as ‘quite a collection’.

In a withering assessment, Nigel Rodley, a leading expert in international human rights law, and a former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, said Ireland’s collection of human rights failures have gone on for a period that was hard ‘to imagine any state party tolerating’.

From Magdalene laundries and the mother-and-baby homes to child abuse and symphysiotomy, recent years have seen the UN repeatedly criticise Ireland’s human rights record on a range of fronts.