The Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) has made a submission to the Working Group on the Establishment of the Human Rights and Equality Commission.

This brief submission highlights some of the shortcomings of the current structures and provides the ICCL’s answers to the three key questions on which the Working Group has sought responses:

What should the new body do?

What features and functions will it need in order to carry out its work?

How should it be structured and what working methods should it use to achieve the above?

The submission is available to download HERE.

This brief submission highlights some of the shortcomings of the current structures and provides the ICCL’s answers to the three key questions on which the Working Group has sought responses.

This submission contains the ICCL's comments on Ireland’s draft Third Report under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

Spanish actress-turned film director Mabel Lozano scooped top prize in the prestigious ICCL Human Rights Film Awards at the Irish Film Institute this evening (Wednesday, 15 June 2011).
 
Lozano first caught the public eye in Spain as a model and actress in top-rated television shows such as Los Ladrones van a la oficina (The Thieves Go to the Office) and well-regarded films such as Berlanga’s París-Tombuctú (Paris-Timbuktu) and Juárez’s Dile a Laura que la quiero (Tell Laura I Love Her).
 
More recently, she has developed her career as a film director with an uncompromising focus on women’s rights, children’s rights and human trafficking.
 
This evening’s winning film Listen to Me is an unflinching look at the human impact of sex trafficking.  The film is based on the true story of sex trafficking victim Svetlana Demidovitch and shows how the complicity of her “clients” helps to ensure that human traffickers can continue their trade. The film’s minimalist style and sparse dialogue underscore the power of its message.
 
Speaking about her film, Lozano said today:
 
“This is a film festival about human rights. One of the worst violations of human rights that I can think of is the trafficking of women and girls; the buying and selling of human beings as if they were bags or shoes. I hope that my film and films like it will help to highlight this serious human rights violation”.
 

This brief submission sets out the ICCL's position on a limited number of the specific issues raised by the Advisory group.