Mapping the Tapestry: National and International Human Rights Frameworks in Northern Ireland and Ireland

Abstract

Northern Ireland and Ireland possess interlinked human rights frameworks that create a complex tapestry. Brexit has shown the scope and depth of these human rights provisions and orders but also the difficulties associated with disentangling a single thread. The intertwined provisions that operate across the two jurisdictions, within the UK, and at regional and international levels more generally are multifaceted, developing over a considerable period and often in an uneven manner. Issues as regards the coverage and enforcement of human rights across the jurisdictions and their relationships with regional and global institutions, as well as the various human rights policies that remain in suspension or unfinished, may be reflected on. This paper considers issues of convergence and divergence in this legal area and whether complexity serves the purpose of comprehensive rights coverage or whether such density lends itself to unravelling.