President Higgins to make call over human rights

President Michael D Higgins will this morning call for the European Convention on Human Rights to be strengthened and extended to cope with the catalogue of crises facing universal rights, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the looming famine on the Horn of Africa.

President Higgins will make the call when he addresses the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the world’s oldest cooperative body on democracy and human rights in Strasbourg.

He will also meet Síofra O’Leary, who will become the first Irish and first female president of the European Court of Human Rights when she takes up her post on 1 November.

The Council of Europe was formed in 1949 following the devastation of World War Two.

Along with the European Court of Human Rights it was charged with protecting universal rights and promoting democracy. It currently has 46 members – Russia was expelled earlier this year.

In the wake of the invasion of Ukraine and devastating food insecurity in the Horn of Africa, President Higgins will call for a longer-term vision for the Council of Europe, one that can fit into a more effective global multilateral order, which, he will say, is today under extreme pressure.

He will say that both the Council of Europe and the Court of Human Rights must be bolstered and extended so that they become a much more real entity for ordinary citizens, and that it contribute to a redefined security architecture in Europe, one that enshrines food security as one of its goals.

President Higgins will make some sharp criticisms of recent EU austerity policies which he will say were enforced upon the citizens of Europe without consideration as to human consequences in order to maintain an under-regulated European banking sector.

This was an approach, he said, that had serious implications for human rights and he will ask why the European Social Charter, which forms part of the institutional make-up of the Council of Europe, was not invoked at the time.

President Higgins will be represented at the funerals in Creeslough of Jessica Gallagher and Martin McGill by his Aide-de-Camp.

He will return from Strasbourg tonight and travel to Donegal tomorrow where he will attend the remaining funerals and meet relatives of all those killed in Friday’s tragedy as well as with members of the emergency services.

President Higgins to make call over human rights
Source: Viral Trends Report