I WANTED to write a full column about blue Christmas lights and how sad they make me. I thought I could tie it to a column about Christmas decorations going up far too early. And about Christmas decorations coming down too early. Except that seems like a very unimportant topic to write about. It’s […]
UK impunity 101
LAST November I was privileged to travel to London with my colleagues from Relatives for Justice (RFJ), RFJ USA, the Committee on the Administration of Justice, the Pat Finucane Centre, Rights Watch UK and Amnesty International to meet the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparations and non-recurrence, Pablo De Greiff. […]
The nasty party
SO, look. I am a strong supporter of the Good Friday Agreement and the peace process generally. I know it requires compromise and challenge. God knows we all in the republican community get that. We gave up Articles 2 and 3 of the Irish Constitution in favour of a process where Irish citizenship was unqualified […]
Darren’s cross an inspiration
I WORK in the field of ‘legacy’. That has meant engaging with the effects of negative and pernicious policies of death and destruction in the context of conflict. While we sometimes appreciate the incredible resilience of those affected by our conflict and the enormous contribution they make to our society, the concept of legacy […]
Lucky to be Irish
Growing up I always felt so lucky to be Irish. And felt doubly lucky to be from Dublin. I was seriously comfortable in my Irish skin. I suppose there was something about not being one of the colonists next door. Something about being the country that produced so many missionaries, nurses and aid workers […]
Rights, wrongs
THE LAWS that enforce the concept of human rights are incredibly recent. They came about after the world witnessed the extreme degradation of humanity that was the Holocaust, when value for life had become so cheap that in the aftermath of World War II the international community realised ordinary citizens needed legal protection, not […]