This presentation focuses on the findings of a research report ‘Political Capacity Building: Advancing a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland’, September 2014. The report seeks to contribute to discussions regarding a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland and sets out a series of recommendations. Drawing upon the report’s evidence-based data from a series of interviews with representatives from the Irish and British governments and the local political parties, the presentation aims to help identify and raise issues that may help progress the Bill of Rights. The presentation is timely given a number of recent developments such as the British government’s forthcoming consultation on a British Bill of Rights; the Irish government expressing its disappointment ‘that a renewed commitment to a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland based on the European Convention of Human Rights, as provided for by the Good Friday Agreement, was not included in the Stormont House Agreement…’; and, the failure to secure an agreement on how to take forward a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland in both the Haas-O’Sullivan talks and the Stormont House Agreement.
