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

•Austerity in Rep. of Ireland: the social impacts

•Relevant human rights treaties

•Human rights; institutionalisation preserving the status quo or potential tool for emancipation?

•Finding hope amongst devastation; Examples of social & economic rights being realised in opposition to austerity in Ireland

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

Community protest, 2012

Austerity – the context• Eight austerity budgets since 2008 - €31 billion,

€18.5bn = public spending cuts.

• Cuts to welfare; child benefit cut, social welfare reduced (youth payments, fuel allowance), back-to-school Clothing and Footwear by 25%, rent supplement, disability and carers’ allowance

• Charges increased/introduced on public services; school transport, prescription charges, A&E, chemotherapy, third level student fees

• Cuts to services; home help, special needs, school, capitation grants for schools, lone parents

• Cuts to public sector wages (disproportionate to new entrants)

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

Inequality of austerity• 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%

Central Statistics Office 2010 those on the “lowest income decile experienced a decrease in equivalised disposable income of more than 26 per cent while those in the highest income decile experienced an increase in income of more than 8 per cent”

ESRI on Budget 2013: lowest income group, the income reduction is just over 1 per cent, while for the top income group it is lower, at a little over half of one per cent.

The most at-risk group of poverty in Ireland, lone parents, lost the highest percentage of income in Budget 2011

Low income workers disproportionately affected by increases in USC and PRSI - Women make up the majority of workers earning the minimum wage or just above.

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

Electoral Division Unemployment rate

John's A, Limerick City 56.8Larchville, Waterford City 44.1Ballymun B, Dublin City 44.0Knocknaheeny, Cork City 43.3Ennis No. 2 Urban, Co Clare 40.2Clondalkin-Rowlagh, South Dublin 38.0

Carrick-on-Suir Urban, South Tipperary 37.3Tralee Urban, Co. Kerry 36.4Enniscorthy Urban, Co. Wexford 35.7

“Europe’s handling of the economic crisis threatens to roll-back decades of social rights.”

“If left unchecked, austerity policies could put between 15 and 25 million more Europeans at risk of poverty by 2025 – nearing the population of the Netherlands and Austria combined. This would bring the number of people at risk of poverty in Europe up to 146 million, over a quarter of the population.”

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) at Article 30 states:With a view to ensuring the effective exercise of the right to protection against poverty

and social exclusion, the Parties undertake: a. to take measures within the framework of an overall and co-ordinated approach to

promote the effective access of persons who live or risk living in a situation of social exclusion or poverty, as well as their families, to, in particular, employment, housing, training, education, culture and social and medical assistance

Article E: "The enjoyment of the rights set forth in this Charter shall be secured without discrimination on any ground such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national extraction or social origin, health association with a national minority, birth or other status“…yet disproportionate cuts to disability, children, women

European Union Charter of Fundamental Rights - same legal value as the European Union treaties –applies to the EU's institutions & member states when implementing EU laws. What about impact of Troika Bailout Programmes –EU/ECB/IMF?

“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? Preserving the status quo? Or are human rights still a potential tool for emancipation?

Limitations of legal and international human rights framework - challenges in practical implementation (realisation) and monitoring: what real effect and power (state and local level) in UN Universal Periodic Review and the Council of Europe’s European Committee of Social Rights?

Vagueness of international human rights standards- a “moral compass” rather than a concrete template on which to base enforceable laws and policies (Kenna, 2011). Elusiveness of terms like “progressive realization”, and “maximum of their available resources” can provide excuses for States from fulfilling their responsibilities (Felner, 2009).

State level legal system that enforces human rights Function to preserve status quo (establishment, power and privilege),

individualised approach, dependent on case law, judges part of elite, legal system is a business, absence of class action ability, in some cases law used to progress human rights

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

self liberation – people power –empowering rights holders to take political action themselves

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, only be achieved through conflict and struggle as will not convince policy makers & elite of ‘logic’ of social and economic rights – requires post-neoliberal, post-capitalist society –where human rights values come before international markets and private wealth accumulation

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

Developed a human rights based social movement that empowered local authority tenants of one of most disadvantaged communities the RRIAG is “… a very innovative approach which is important both to empower tenants to articulate their problems in terms of human rights standards and to provide a way of measuring to what extent the housing conditions in Dolphin House are improving or otherwise”Maurice Manning, Irish Human Rights Commission (IHRC)

Realised the right to proper housing conditions & the right to regeneration, based on the principles of

sustaining the existing community, rather than large-scale displacement and gentrification

Community development to empower tenants (educate and train, organising and leadership) to lead a public campaign/social movements - publicly critical created the political pressure that forced the state to act

“The rights is taking back power –you would have been afraid to go to the estate manager-as you didn’t feel you had the right to complain–living in a council flat. It (RRIAG) has given people a voice. We had somewhere to live at a low rent–who were we to complain? We now know we have the right to live in adequate, healthy, environment” Tenant involved in RRIAG

Contrasts with:•some NGOs focused on training and education but reluctant to empower and organise campaign and directly challenge power •individual legal approach – its collective and empowering

Human Rights as a framework for emancipation•Role of human agency of the rights holder – empowerment not charity•Leads to different role of NGOs, academics. Alongside lobbying politicians and civil servants, policy documents, press launches etc prioritise organising & empowering rights holders to campaign and challenge the power and privilege that denies their rights •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