Human rights centre opens in Galway today

A Canadian academic, Prof William Schabas, who has been appointed the State's first professor of human rights law at NUI Galway, believes Ireland is going through a transitional period similar to that which transformed Canadian society from one that was largely homogeneous to one that is now multiracial.

While Canada has a good international reputation in dealing with refugees and asylum-seekers, scratch the surface and one still encounters quiet hostility on the part of officialdom.

"So, of course, you have that here," he says. "And because the Celtic Tiger is not just about people getting rich and buying nice houses, one also has to accept that other people will be attracted to this society.

"I think Irish people are fundamentally good and welcoming, but ignorance and fear can create a negative climate. There are a relatively small number of asylum-seekers here, and Irish society should regard it as a compliment that people want to come.

"Integration must be facilitated as quickly as possible, and these new citizens then become assets. Apart from anything, this is an obligation under international law."

Prof Schabas was recently appointed director of the new centre for human rights, to be opened by the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Mr O'Donoghue, in NUI Galway today. He says the fact that Ireland has not fully signed up to the European Convention of Human Rights is more of an "embarrassment" than anything else. "Ireland was one of the first to ratify the convention in 1953, and it is now the only one of 41 members attached to the Council of Europe that hasn't translated it into domestic law. People have to take their case to Strasbourg. It seems nonsensical that they should have to do that."

Prof Schabas is conscious, however, that he has only been in Ireland for a few weeks. He doesn't want the human rights centre, housed in a former fever hospital on the university campus, to be removed from reality. He still has to recruit staff, and the master's in international human rights law doesn't begin until September, but he is already involved in the visit to Ireland of a US campaigner against the death penalty.

Mr Don Cabana is a former Mississippi prison warden who could no longer support the death penalty after years of contact with men on death row. The author of Death at Midnight - Confessions of an Executioner, Mr Cabana teaches criminal justice at the University of South Mississippi. His visit is being hosted by Amnesty International, and he will speak at NUI Galway on Tuesday, March 7th.

Prof Schabas is currently working on the third edition of his book, The Abolition of the Death Penalty in International Law. He is also editor of Criminal Law Forum, an international journal with a focus on human rights and international criminal law.

He is constantly surprised by how reasonable civil libertarians can become extremely conservative on the punishment for serious crime. "Even on economic grounds, this fetish in the US for capital punishment doesn't make sense," he says.

"Not that someone's life should be down to economics, but it has been proven that it costs less to keep a criminal in prison for life than to sentence them to death, given the cost of all the appeals, judicial procedures and all that.

"And police chiefs in the US have long maintained that they could use some of the money that goes towards sustaining the death penalty to fight crime and encourage crime prevention."

As for prison, Prof Schabas says that he is personally a "penal abolitionist", rather like he is also a vegetarian. "That is, I don't eat meat but once in a while I will have a hamburger. So I don't like the idea of prisons, but don't think they should be abolished."

He is intrigued by the enthusiasm for building prisons in Ireland, given the undeveloped state of rehabilitation. "You build too many prisons, and then you have to find people to fill them."

It is a mirror on society, he believes. "Twenty years ago California had one of the finest education systems in the US and very few prisons. Now it has state-of-the-art prisons and languishing universities, starved of funds. In the US, there are over two million people behind bars."

Prof Schabas has participated in fact-finding missions on behalf of both governments and non-governmental organisations in Burundi, Sudan, South Africa, Guyana, Cambodia and Rwanda. He was a member of a delegation that visited Rwanda in 1993.

"I dug mass graves. We found bodies that had been executed," he acknowledges. His group warned of the impending genocide of Tutsis. The warning was ignored by the international community. By the time it was taken seriously, it was too late.

Since then, he has been back to Rwanda two to three times a year. Can the society recover? "I don't know," he says. "It was such a level of violence, so many deaths, in such a short space of time. And it has no Nelson Mandela, and no Belfast Agreement."

For all that he has seen and experienced, he has not lost his faith in humanity and in the legal system. He has been involved in war crimes tribunals in both Yugoslavia and Rwanda. "You realise that the issue isn't about putting people in jail, but about truth and about helping societies to come to terms with their past."

"Mandela knew he had no choice but to opt for a truth commission in South Africa, because a tribunal would have caused civil war."

And in Northern Ireland? "Every society is different, and has its own needs. Given that the release of prisoners jailed for political crimes is an integral part of the Belfast Agreement, it would seem vital that the reintegration of former prisoners back into society has to be a priority.

"At the same time, one also has to take the families of victims into account. The problem is striking the balance and making sure that there are adequate mechanisms for ensuring that such people can become gainfully employed again, without discrimination."