Sir, – Jaime Todd-Gher and Christina Zampas (April 28th) are upset by Breda O'Brien's article "Amnesty abandons values of Seán MacBride" (Opinion & Analysis, April 23rd) quoting their earlier acknowledgement that human rights committees "are not judicial bodies and their concluding observations are not legally binding". The person who should be more upset, however, is Colm O'Gorman, who has sought to rely on the observations of these committees in support of his incorrect claim that there is a right to abortion in international law.
The International Law Association, our own Supreme Court, and an overwhelming consensus of human rights scholars agree that the observations of human rights bodies are not legally binding under international law.
It is a remarkable tragedy that Mr O’Gorman, who is associated with an organisation that placed the protection of life at its core, should now campaign for the removal of protection of the lives of unborn children. An unborn child is a human being, whose rights and dignity should not be ignored. Yet nowhere in recent correspondence has Mr O’Gorman ever even referred to the child. His vision of human rights sadly fails to capture the rights of this group of vulnerable human beings, who would greatly benefit from his powerful advocacy, if only his vision extended that far. – Yours, etc,
WILLIAM BINCHY, BL
Law Library,
Dublin 7.