At 6.30 pm this Tuesday Atheist Ireland will have the first ever meeting of the Taoiseach with atheist advocacy group and the Minister for Education, as part of the dialogue process between Government and religious and nonreligious philosophical bodies. This will be the first time...
Atheist Ireland will register this year with the Standards in Public Office Commission. The Standards in Public Office Commission is an independent body established in December 2001 by the Standards in Public Office Act 2001. It has six members and is chaired by a former...
Michael Nugent and Jane Donnelly attended the launch yesterday of the FLAC report on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in Ireland. The report will be forwarded to the United Nations as part of Ireland’s questioning about its obligations under the International Covenant on Economic,...
Atheist Ireland’s recommendations to the OSCE human rights meeting in Warsaw last month are now available here on the OSCE website, along with the following documents: Our formal statements to the meeting, Dublin Declaration on Secularism and Religion in Public Life 5 steps to secularism...
This is video and text of Michael Nugent’s contributions to the annual OSCE human rights meeting in Warsaw, Poland, earlier this week. Contribution to Session on Discrimination The OSCE Guidelines for reviewing laws about freedom of religion or belief, stress the ‘or belief’ part of...
In an article in the Irish Times today the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin is quoted as stating that a pluralist Ireland can only happen through “dialogue and respect”. He is also quoted as stating that “Elements in society are ‘allergic’ to mention of...
We’ve been working for most of this week on this submission to the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. It is part of a process by which civil society groups provide input to the Committee as it prepares to question Ireland next...
Here are some pictures of Atheist Ireland and Alison Mawhinny, along with other Irish NGOs, briefing the UN Human Rights Committee at the formal and informal sessions in Geneva. Alison is an independent academic who worked with Atheist Ireland on Freedom of Religion issues. The...
Last month Ireland appeared before the UN Human Rights Committee in Geneva under the International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights (ICCPR). Every five years the UN questions Ireland in relation to their human rights obligations under the Covenant. In relation to the right to...
Educate Together has made two statements recently that undermine the duty of the Irish Government to provide secular education though new non-denominational schools, as required by the UN Human Rights Committee. Educate Together is doing this by blurring the distinction between multi-denominational schools (which Educate...