The Irish Council for Civil Liberties ( ga, An Chomhairle um Chearta Daonna) is an Irish non-profit organisation dedicated to supporting the civil liberties and

human rights Human rights are moral principles or normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for certain standards of hu ...

of people in

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

History

Founded in 1976 by future President

Mary Robinson Mary Therese Winifred Robinson ( ga, Máire Mhic Róibín; ; born 21 May 1944) is an Irish politician who was the 7th president of Ireland, serving from December 1990 to September 1997, the first woman to hold this office. Prior to her electi ...

Kader Asmal Abdul Kader Asmal (8 October 1934 – 22 June 2011) was a South African politician. He was a professor of human rights at the University of the Western Cape, chairman of the council of the University of the North and vice-president of the A ...

and others. Their primary role is in campaigning for civil rights as well as networking with other civil rights groups both nationally and internationally. During the divorce campaign of the 1980s and 1990s, the ICCL campaigned to support the legalisation of divorce which had previously been prohibited in the

Constitution A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organisation or other type of entity and commonly determine how that entity is to be governed. When these princ ...

. In 1995 this was successfully passed. The ICCL are a member organisation of the

International Federation of Human Rights The International Federation for Human Rights (french: Fédération internationale des ligues des droits de l'homme; FIDH) is a non-governmental federation for human rights organizations. Founded in 1922, FIDH is the third oldest international h ...

(FIDH). The ICCL has repeatedly sought the abolition of the

Special Criminal Court The Special Criminal Court (SCC; ga, Cúirt Choiriúil Speisialta) is a juryless criminal court in Ireland which tries terrorism and serious organised crime cases. Legal basis Article 38 of the Constitution of Ireland empowers the Dáil to ...

, and in 2009 opposed its expansion from a narrow focus on state security-related trials to also include

organised crime Organized crime (or organised crime) is a category of transnational, national, or local groupings of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals to engage in illegal activity, most commonly for profit. While organized crime is generally th ...

. In October 2011, the ICCL said the information provided to voters in advance of polling in two constitutional referendums on the Twenty-ninth Amendment and Thirtieth Amendment was "tardy and inadequate". and advocated a 'no' vote on the proposed Thirtieth Amendment. The Thirtieth Amendment was subsequently rejected by 116,000 votes. In January 2020, the ICCL criticised management at CBS Kilkenny for attempting to implement facial recognition technology to record and process the biometric data of children and staff in the school. The implementation was postponed as a result. In May 2020 ICCL suggested that Gardaí using

spit hood A spit hood, spit mask, mesh hood or spit guard is a restraint device intended to prevent a person from spitting or biting. The use of the hoods has been controversial. Justification for use Proponents, often including police unions and associa ...

during the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

might be "inhumane and degrading". In recent years, the ICCL has prioritized police and justice reform as one of its main causes.

References

External links

Official website
{{Authority control Civil liberties advocacy groups Human rights in Ireland Council for Civil Liberties

History

See also

References

External links