The Irish representative to an influential European human rights watchdog resigned his position there over the organisation’s failure to address the situation in Gaza.
Michael Farrell, who spent 14 years at the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), said the body would lose respect on other issues if it did not change course.
“You cannot work in an organisation that is concerned with human rights … and ignore what is going on in Gaza ... It certainly is a genocide," Mr Farrell, a veteran lawyer and civil rights activist, said.
The ECRI is the independent human rights monitoring body of the Council of Europe, which is distinct from the European Union.
RM Block
Farrell submitted his resignation last month after the latest plenary meeting in which he says his proposed motion to draft “a very, very moderate recommendation” for the commission to publish was not approved.
In brief, the draft made the point that “Israel should stop their attacks, they should allow the food and aid to come in [to Gaza], it should be dealt with by the international bodies, and also that Hamas should hand over the remaining hostages,” according to Mr Farrell. He said the debate on the draft lasted over the course of two days, and the commission “just wouldn’t move”.
“The argument being put up, and there wasn’t much discussion from the leadership or from the chair, was just: ‘this is out of our mandate’,” Mr Farrell said, although he doesn’t accept this rationale.
“In presuming that what they meant by that is that they were only able to deal with the things that were going on within the European area, I made the argument that a number of European countries are financing this, providing all the weapons for it. They’re playing a major part in this, and, therefore, we are entitled to criticise them for it.”
[ Israel’s Gaza City plan greeted with widespread international criticismOpens in new window ]
A spokesperson for the ECRI secretariat told The Irish Times that the organisation was “mandated to monitor state action against racism, intolerance and related forms of discrimination in Europe”. The situation in the Middle East has “not been considered by ECRI members as falling within their mandate”.
Meanwhile, Mr Farrell said he received support from a small number of other representatives on the commission after his resignation, and that he did not criticise others for joining him in his stand.
“People are afraid of losing their jobs, there were people who were in bodies which are funded by the state, and they were afraid if they spoke out on this that the state wouldn’t draw in the money from the organisations that they work in, which do good work,” he said.
Mr Farrell was the first Irish lawyer to advocate on behalf of a client in front of the United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHCR) and the European Courts of Human Rights (ECHR).
He was a driving factor behind Dr Lydia Foy’s campaign to legally change her sex, and further advocated on issues pertaining to transgender people in Ireland.
A native of Magherafelt, Co Derry and a graduate of Queen’s University Belfast, he worked as a journalist before his legal career, highlighting the campaign to free the Birmingham Six and Guilford Four.
During his time with the ECRI, Farrell acted at times as the commission’s vice-chair and also chaired its working group on LGBTI rights.
Since Hamas’s 2023 attack on Israel, in which 1,200 Israelis were killed and 251 taken hostage, more than 60,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza due to the military conflict in the region.
The UN General Assembly has condemned Israeli use of “starvation as a method of warfare” as the conflict continues, with aid distribution controlled by Israel.
Mr Farrell is steadfast in his belief that “if they don’t deal with this, apart from the fact that they should simply because there’s so many people being killed, they will lose the level of respect on other human rights issues”.
