The Women's Human Rights project is one of 70 projects which is being funded under the equality for women measure of the National Development Plan 2000-2006. These projects are being funded on a once off basis with the intention of generally mainstreaming the learning into various policy arenas on their conclusion. It is not intended to provide core funding to any of the projects on an ongoing basis.
The human rights of all people are fundamental to the development of our society and that there is only one human rights community which is, and should be, our entire society. I also believe that women's human rights are indivisible from those of men and children and that the promotion and vindication of human rights is everyone's responsibility and not solely the business of any specialist organisation.
The Government has been to the forefront in introducing legislation and policies to protect human rights in this jurisdiction. The Human Rights Commission, established to give effect to a commitment in the Good Friday Agreement, benefits all sectors of Irish society, including women. The Human Rights Commission Act 2001 provides that at least seven of the 15 human rights commissioners must be women. The European Convention on Human Rights Act 2003 further complements and underpins the protection of human rights in this jurisdiction.
In the wider equality context, rights based legislation in the form of the Employment Equality Act 1998, the Equal Status Act 2000 and more recently the Equality Act 2004 was introduced and supported by an equality infrastructure to defend the rights of the groups named in the equality legislation.
Ireland is also a signatory to a number of important international instruments for promoting women's rights. These include the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, CEDAW, including the optional protocol to that convention and the UN Beijing Platform for Action. Ireland reports periodically to the United Nations on the implementation of these instruments, the most recent being Ireland's report to the United Nations on the national plan for women 2002 on the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action and Ireland's combined fourth and fifth reports under CEDAW.
