STRONG LAWS and accessible mechanisms for the vindication of human rights are important elements in ensuring a human rights culture, President Mary McAleese said yesterday.
The President was giving the third annual Irish Human Rights Commission (IHRC) lecture in the National Gallery, on the theme of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. She said that this year also marked the 10th anniversary of the Belfast Agreement and the 40th anniversary of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Movement, and pointed out that "one of its prime champions", Michael Farrell, was now a member of the IHRC, part of the infrastructure created by the Belfast Agreement.
"Such structures are important evidence of the mainstreaming of human rights consciousness at every level of political and civic society," she said.
"They keep that consciousness at a high level of priority and ensure that the attitudes and mindsets which harbour reluctance to acknowledge the rights of others are persistently challenged, critiqued and outed, whether by advocacy or litigation."
Peace-making and the growth of a human rights culture are intrinsic to one another, she said. "Persistent and pervasive human rights abuses are a recipe for instability and volatility.
"Strong legislation and accessible mechanisms for the vindication of human rights are important elements in the process of full conversion to a culture in which respect for human rights is embedded and spontaneous."
She said that two of the most remarkable aspects of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were its innovation in giving priority to the individual human being and the absolutely universal nature of the document.
"With its focus on the individual, the great walls of state became penetrable and permeable, their treatment of citizens open to observation, to measurement, to accountability to the entire human family," she said.
"And who is this individual to whom these rights apply?" she asked. "The reply from the declaration is a breathtaking and magnificent visualisation of humanity. The rights apply to everyone, regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, gender, disability, age and sexual orientation."
Referring to its universality, she said that nations and states of vastly different economic philosophies, legal and cultural traditions and religious beliefs had agreed a single conception of human dignity.
"The declaration provided the cornerstone for the United Nations human rights architecture and all legally binding human rights treaties have their roots in the document," she said, pointing out that Ireland had ratified the six core UN human rights treaties.
In every generation Ireland had produced human rights champions like Daniel O'Connell, who never saw themselves in narrow insular terms but as articulators of the rights of all mankind.
She praised the work today of Frontline, the international NGO founded in Ireland that highlights the work of defenders of human rights.
No other generation in Ireland had known the freedom and opportunities that the present one did. However, long before the universal declaration was crafted the Irish people had set out our human rights stall in the 1937 Constitution which "assured the dignity and freedom of the individual" and before that the 1916 Proclamation set out the values that were to infuse the republic.