Developing a human rights culture, with Labour Party leader, Ivana Bacik TD

Human rights, deliberative democracy, Covid and more

Ivana Bacik, Leader of the Republic of Ireland's Labour Party and Reid Professor of Criminal Law, Criminology and Penology at Trinity College Dublin Law School, talks to Lucy Delap, professor in Modern British and Gender History at the University of Cambridge about human rights discourses in the Republic of Ireland and her own experience campaigning for human rights issues, most notably for female reproductive rights. How has a human rights culture been embedded into Irish politics? What role has deliberative democracy played? How can we encourage kindness in political spaces? Can human rights frameworks take the poison out of antagonistic debates? How did Covid change Irish politics? And we take questions from the floor on North/South and East/West relations, the future of the EU, and Irish unification.

Scroll on to discover:

• Executive summary
• About the speaker and discussant
• Watch the conversation
• What was said?

Executive summary

Bacik reflects on how a human rights culture developed in the Republic of Ireland, the constitutional victories won for gay marriage and access to abortion in 2015 and 2018 respectively, and the future of human rights in Ireland.

• As a established professor of Criminal Law, it is unsurprising that Ivana takes us through the landslide twentieth century rulings, such as the right for women to sit on a jury, that built the foundations for human rights discourses.
• During the 2010s, there was an emergence of ‘deliberative democracy Citizen’s Assemblies’ to advise the government on human rights legislation. These have been important when dealing with emotional debates. Expert testimony has been carefully listened to. Lucy Delap questions whether this is unique to Ireland and Bacik explains that they drew from other international models, such as Canada.
• Covid played a key role in endearing the Irish electorate to greater state intervention and public services. This shift to the left in political culture, for Bacik, has prompted exploring how to develop a new human rights culture.
• On human rights issues, the Republic has often looked to Northern Ireland and Britain and followed legal developments closely. This relationship continues today, but has inverted as the Republic becomes more progressive and now leads the way on human rights issues. Campaigners work together across the border, although Bacik acknowledges momentum has flagged since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement.
• Bacik cautions complacency on human rights issues and points to campaigners already trying to restrict Ireland’s new abortion legislation.

About the speaker

Ivana grew up Dublin and has taught law over many years in Trinity College Dublin. As a student activist, Ivana was taken to court and threatened with prison for providing information on abortion in a case that paved the way for the repeal of the Eighth Amendment and the legalisation of abortion in Ireland. Ivana was first elected to serve in Seanad Éireann (the Irish upper house) in 2007. An experienced legislator, Ivana has seen more of her opposition bills become law than any other senator. Ivana’s reforming legislation has tackled issues such as working conditions for freelancers, secular marriage, women’s health rights and LGBT equality. A long-term campaigner for constitutional change, Ivana was a leading national and local voice in the Marriage Equality and Repeal the Eighth campaigns.

Ivana Bacik was elected to Dáil Éireann to serve as TD for Dublin Bay South in July 2021, following a bye-election after the resignation of Fine Gael TD Eoghan Murphy. In March 2022, she was confirmed unopposed as the new leader of the Labour Party. She is currently spokesperson on the Environment and Climate; Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth.

Ivana is a keen cyclist and swimmer and is working to improve cycling infrastructure, to increase green spaces and to enhance the water quality and recreational value of Dublin Bay. Ivana’s surname is Czech. Before settling in Co. Waterford, her paternal grandfather was imprisoned by the Nazis. Her mother's family come from Co. Clare.

About the discussant

Lucy Delap is Professor in Modern British and Gender History at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Murray Edwards College. Her research has principally been focused on the history of feminisms, spanning Britain, the United States and the former British Empire. Her recent book, Feminisms: a global history (Routledge, 2020) explores the global dimensions of feminisms as the materialised across time and space.

Watch the conversation

What was said?

In the past decade, Ireland, a historically conservative country, has transitioned into being seen as one of the most progressive countries in Europe. Pivotal referendums in 2015 and 2018 respectively legalised gay marriage and abortion. For Ivana, these historic votes reflect a broader cultural shift in Ireland as a human rights discourse has been embedded.

The COVID pandemic has been the latest evolution in this shift, as Irish voters have supported the extension of the state, expanding public health services, and giving the state greater intervention powers. As Ireland looks to the future and how this political shift may prompt a new human rights culture, Ivana tells us how it evolved throughout the twentieth century. She knows her history, explaining how human rights judgements on the constitution were important stepping-stones, such as the right for women to sit on a jury. These rulings, and the more recent cases on issues like gay marriage and trans rights, are “narrow definitions of human rights”. For Ivana, it is still useful to think about human rights in a narrow sense encompassing written bills of rights. In Ireland, it is exactly this that has meant a human rights culture has become entrenched. Looking forward, she highlighted that the NGO community and the climate movements are pushing new discourses on human rights with new meanings. Rights are being reimagined in different contexts and embedded further into Irish life.

Lucy Delap opened the conversation by asking “how much weight can the human rights discourse bear? Is it up to the job of mediating all the different sites of politics? Can human rights be the key to unlocking all of these places?” Ivana responded that while she has come round to the method of asserting rights, a rights-based discourse cannot be the only vehicle to bring about change, and can on some occasions be counter-productive. She recounts how during the debate on abortion, a binary framework of rights was set up and some women who had had crisis pregnancies and abortions admitted they felt excluded from the process. They felt their experience of abortion was more nuanced than simply wanting a right to choose, and that in their own experiences, they hadn’t had any choice. For Ivana, a nuanced, multi-faceted approach will always be needed, rather than just relying on rights-based discourses alone.

Lucy returned to Ivana’s comments on COVID changing voters’ opinions on state intervention and reflecting how trust has been called into question all over the world. She asked, “Who do we trust?”, and “Where do we look for kindness in political life which is often a polarised landscape?”. Ivana highlighted how in Ireland, she doesn’t consider Irish people to be particularly trusting of governments, but yet Ireland had a very high vaccine uptake. There is some evidence that there was lower uptake in more marginalised communities, which she links back to toxicity in public debate. Labour, as an opposition party, tries to keep debate positive, according to Ivana. In their most recent bye-election campaign, for example, they chose not to attack their opponents but focus on what they could positively contribute. Lucy pointed to social media as a typically hostile space and asks if Ivana has bypassed it or thinks there are alternatives available. Twitter has many benefits, Ivana responded, noting how it can be far-reaching and democratic in terms of access.

Ivana described how Ireland’s Citizens Assemblies have helped paved the way to the pivotal votes on abortion and marriage. In Ireland, they adopted what they call a ‘deliberative democracy process’ through such assemblies. The recent assembly has produced 45 recommendations for gender equality – the new test is whether parliaments can deliver on these recommendations and help move Ireland through Covid and towards a more equal society. Lucy asked Ivana to say more about this process. Ivana explained how recommendations for gender equality had emerged in 2011 as a compromise when Labour had wanted to bring in changes on gay marriage that would have been controversial. A constitutional convention was established which brought together citizens and politicians to hear presentations from experts in a space free of shouting and sensationalism. This evidence-based framework is something Ivana considers a real merit, particularly considering the emotional nature of the topic. This system was so successful it delivered the 2015 referendum; in 2016, another was set up to tackle abortion, but this time without politicians being involved. It has now become a semi-permanent fixture that takes the heat out of controversial debate.

Where will progress be made next? Ivana returned to the 45 recommendations on gender equality. Ireland will be looking at childcare, the gender pay gap, and elder care. A strong focus on care will also bring the rights of carers and the cared-for under scrutiny. Ivana is, however, concerned about setting up hierarchies of rights which can create problems further down the line – this is what happened with abortion laws in the 1980s.

Lucy asks whether Ivana sees rights as a rachet – travelling in a singular direction – or more like a tide. Ivana cautions that we can never be complacent with human rights, pointing to constant attempts in America to revert Roe vs. Wade (the Supreme Court went on to strike down Roe vs. Wade in June 2022) and attempts in Ireland to restrict access to abortion.

One audience member asks how human rights campaigns in other countries can help each other. Ivana highlights that they already do so. She remembers that at the 2018 celebrations following the Republic’s referendum on abortion, one of the biggest banners read ‘The North is next’, and that that is what they’re working on at the moment. She brought attention to the fact that the Good Friday Agreement contains a clause that there should be an equivalence of rights across the island and that there was a lot of work done on a Northern Irish bill of rights, but that momentum on this issue has since diminished. Niamh Gallagher reflected on the fact that in the series we often ask about a united Ireland and what it will look like. She asked Ivana whether “this is the question that should be asked when thinking about Ireland?”. Ivana responded that she understands why, particularly from external perspectives, the question is the obvious one. But she also thinks that there has been a more harmonious relationship since the Good Friday Agreement and that unification is not the priority for most parties on the island. She cautioned that if there were a referendum it would need both consent and be carefully led into. She argued that whatever Sinn Fein say, if and when they go into government, it is very hard to see a border poll in the near future.

What lies ahead in the future of human rights in the EU and Ireland’s place in that? Ivana highlights that although there was strong support for the EU project when Ireland first joined, there was also a strong Eurosceptic perspective. Brexit in fact consolidated support for the EU. She thinks that in terms of human rights protections in the EU, there isn’t a strong appetite for a more federalist system and it’s more about consolidating the status quo at present.