Amnesty International has again criticised Government procedures for dealing with asylum applications and says the 1996 Refugee Act should be implemented in full.
In its latest annual report, the organisation also says the inquiry into the killing of the human rights lawyer Mrs Rosemary Nelson should not be conducted by the RUC because it could not guarantee impartiality.
One page of Amnesty's 400-page report is devoted to human rights issues in Ireland; there was no Irish entry in last year's report.
Amnesty says asylum-seekers were deported last year under procedures which were not independent, and which did not provide for a full and fair hearing of all asylum applications.
It urged the Government to give a full and fair hearing to all asylum-seekers arriving here, including those arriving through other EU states.
It also called on the Government to ensure that the killing by gardai of Ronan MacLochainn was promptly, thoroughly and impartially investigated.
MacLochlainn was shot dead in disputed circumstances in May 1998 while fleeing from the scene of an attempted armed robbery.
Amnesty says the initial Garda statements reporting that he was killed during a shoot-out were retracted.
The agency says new emergency legislation introduced in Britain and the Republic after the Omagh bombing last September violates international standards.
However, it welcomes the commitments in the Belfast Agreement to respect human rights and in particular the proposal to establish human rights commissions north and south of the Border.
Armed groups in the North carried out more than 200 punishment beatings or shootings last year, the report notes.
Fifty-five people were killed; one-third by loyalists and two-thirds by republican groups.
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