The Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement has been significant in improving equality and human rights in Northern Ireland. Twenty-five years on from this Agreement, there are concerns about the impact of Brexit on these rights.
People in Northern Ireland already have fewer equality and human rights protections in some areas than their counterparts in Ireland and Great Britain. The Equality Commission for Northern Ireland, the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission are warning that this disparity will widen further if the UK Government does not act.
Before Brexit, many EU laws were automatically applicable in Northern Ireland, the rest of the UK and Ireland. This helped ensure alignment of equality and human rights laws across all of the UK and Ireland.
The UK Government has made a commitment that certain protections in place in Northern Ireland regarding the rights, safeguards and equality of opportunity provisions will not be reduced now that the UK has left the EU. It also committed that certain Northern Ireland’s equality rights laws will keep pace with future EU equality law changes.
As part of their joint responsibilities under Article 2 of the Windsor Framework the three Commissions have launched at today’s event an independent.