‘Making Economic, Social & Cultural Rights Meaningful’

29 March 2017  - Maynooth Law students contributed to an important human rights conference hosted by the Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Initiative, a coalition of over 60 civil society organisations that support strengthening the protection of economic, social and cultural rights in the Irish Constitution. The conference on Making Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Meaningful brought together key policy-makers, academics, legal practitioners and rights campaigners to discuss pathways to stronger economic, social and cultural rights protections in Ireland as a means of advancing social justice and redressing inequalities.
 
Students from Maynooth Law module LW646 on Economic, Social & Cultural Rights, taught by Dr. John Reynolds, prepared fact sheets for the conference on key issues around implementation of economic, social and cultural rights in Ireland in the fields of education, employment, housing, social security, migration, and linguistic rights. Further details of the event and the conference materials prepared by the students are available on the Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Initiative website here.
 
Students from the Department of Law’s LLM programmes in International Justice and Global Legal Studies attended and participated in the conference, which featured prominent speakers and authorities in the field of human rights and social justice, including Dr. Mary Murphy, Senior Lecturer at Maynooth University Department of Sociology (and member of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission), and Anastasia Crickley, Senior Lecturer Emeritus at Maynooth University (and Chairperson of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination). The conference was funded by the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission.
 
--