European Protection on Social Rights and austerity and cuts: Ireland and beyondDr Rory Hearne, Dept. of Geography, NUIM

ICTU ‘anti-austerity’ protest, Dublin, Nov 2010

Community protest, 2012

Inequality of austerity• Eight austerity budgets since 2008 - €31 billion,

€18.5bn = public spending cuts. • Cuts to welfare• Charges increased/introduced on public services• Cuts to services & numbers• Cuts to public sector wages

• Emigration (90,000 (2013) 50,000 Irish nationals• Mortgage arrears - 97,874 (12.7 per cent)

The gap between the richest and poorest in Ireland increased by 25% in 2010. The top 20% avg income is 5 times the income of those on the lowest 20%

National Regeneration Budget for Most Disadvantaged communities 2008-2013

2008 2009 2010 2012 2013Total (million)

121 97 116 90 80

Government funding reductions for voluntary and community sector 2008-2012

Local Community Development Programme

- 35%

Initiatives against drugs - 29%

Family support projects - 17%

Substandard housing from collapse of PPP & subsequent regeneration budget cuts

Unemployment Blackspots (Census 2011): Nationally (13.2%, 2013)

Electoral Division Unemployment rate

John's A, Limerick City 56.8

Ballymun B, Dublin City 44.0

Knocknaheeny, Cork City 43.3

Tralee Urban, Co. Kerry 36.4

Enniscorthy Urban, Co. Wexford 35.7

“Europe’s handling of the economic crisis threatens to roll-back decades of social rights.”Oxfam, A Cautionary Tale; The True Cost of Austerity and Inequality in Europe, Sept. 2013

Relevant Human Rights Treaties

The Council of Europe Revised European Social Charter (RESC) Article 30 & Article EEuropean Union Charter of Fundamental RightsUN ICESCR

“Human rights are not dispensable and cannot be disregarded in times of economic uncertainty. On the contrary, these are times in which people become more susceptible to potential infringements on their basic rights and have higher risks

of falling into poverty.”

UN Independent expert on poverty Magdelena Sepulveda, following visit to Ireland, January 2011

But… have human rights organisations & institutions just become institutionalised, captured by the establishment?

State level legal system that enforces human rights Function to preserve status quo, individualised

Need to go back to origins of human rights Stammers (2009) Human Rights and Social Movements –

emancipation and empowerment

Henri Lefebrve in "Le droite à la ville" (Right to the City), UN Habitat – achieving social and economic human rights inevitably depends upon the exercise of a collective power to reshape society

Harvey (2012) Achieving social and economic rights radical redistribution of wealth and power, requires post-neoliberal, post-capitalist society

Successful rights based campaigns against austerity cuts in recent Budgets

• Right to medical card for pensioners• DEIS –right to disadvantaged schools to retain funding• Special needs assistants-right to in-class support for those education special needs

• Community development projects & community employment schemes in disadvantaged areas

• Stopping the sell-off of public forests

Dolphin House ‘Rialto Rights Inaction’ Human Rights campaign

Human rights based social movement that empowered local authority tenants of one of most disadvantaged communities –collective,critical, empoweringContrasts with some NGOs & individual legal approach

Human Rights as a framework for emancipation• Role of human agency of the rights holder • Leads to different role of NGOs, academics• Action based advocacy – not afraid of being political • Without empowerment and radical critique we are in danger of becoming incorporated and sustaining the very system we want to transform

“historically, movements that have constructed and struggled for human rights have typically challenged arbitrary power and privilege...social movement struggles around human rights have contained a dimension which points towards democratising all forms of social relations” (Stammers, 2009; p. 249)

Social & economic rights movement must learn the lessons of struggle from civil rights movement

•Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom.

•Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

•Human progress in neither automatic nor inevitable…Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals

Martin Luthur King Jr.

ENDS