A PROPOSED Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland was published in Belfast yesterday with its authors conceding there was no consensus on any of its main proposals.
This was highlighted by the DUP and the Catholic Church members of the Bill of Rights Forum boycotting the launch of the document in the Hilton Hotel.
The DUP and Catholic Church opposed what they said was the document's failure to protect the right to life from "conception to death".
"Trees have more rights in this document than the unborn child," said DUP Assembly member Simon Hamilton. The DUP opposed the document on several other fronts as well.
Chris Sidoti, the Australian chairman of the forum, formally handed over the draft Bill of Rights to Monica McWilliams, head of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission.
Prof McWilliams' commission has until December 10th to consider the forum's proposals and then in turn publish its own recommendations for a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland.
It is planned that a Bill of Rights would be enacted at Westminster, as the Northern Executive and Assembly are "excepted" from devising such a Bill. This, it is generally conceded, is because there is little expectation Northern politicians could agree a Bill of Rights.
Prof McWilliams praised the work of the forum yesterday but it was clear by the variety of views on the proposals from the forum's own members that the commission will have a hugely difficult task completing a Bill of Rights that will be broadly acceptable in Northern Ireland.
The forum, which has worked on the draft Bill for 15 months, comprised all the main political parties in the North, including Alliance, and representatives from the churches, trade unions, the business sector, the local human rights groups, and community and voluntary bodies.
In addition to differences over the right to life issue, as expressed by the DUP and Catholic Church, the members were divided on a wide range of other matters as well, with nationalist members generally favouring a broad-focused Bill of Rights and unionists favouring a more limited Bill.
The draft Bill deals with issues such as: equality, the right to liberty, security, and privacy; freedom of thought and conscience, and religion; culture, language and identity; nationality and identity; prisoners; and victims.
The participants could not achieve unanimity on any of the main issues. They couldn't even agree what should constitute a "short preamble" to the Bill. Two preambles were suggested, and even here there were differences.
An example of the divisions was evident in the equality section where there is a recommendation that public authorities may not discriminate against a range of groups and individuals including those with an "irrelevant criminal record or conflict related convictions".
However, the DUP, the UUP, Alliance and the Catholic Church opposed this particular proposal. The SDLP made no reference to this proposal while Sinn Féin said it would only support the overall recommendation referring to public authorities as long as the reference to "conflict-related convictions" was retained.
Former Ulster Unionist MLA Dermot Nesbitt, a member of the forum, said the Human Rights Commission must not ignore the "lack of cross-community support" for the Bill as was evident in the actual report.