Mr. Salil Shetty:

I am pleased to be afforded this opportunity to address the committee on the day we launch our report on Ireland's abortion laws. Amnesty International is a global independent human rights movement. We have no political or religious affiliations. Amnesty's global My Body My Rights campaign works around the world to ensure that we all have the right to make decisions about our bodies and sexual and reproductive lives, which include the right to information and access to services. We work on this in several countries, including Nepal, Burkina Faso, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, El Salvador and, now, here in Ireland.

We hope to contribute through this piece of research and this campaign to the entrenched, sensitive and often personal debate on abortion here with a clear human rights perspective and with thorough research into the impact of abortion laws on the human rights of women and girls. Let me be clear. In almost all cases, criminalising abortion and denying women and girls access to safe and legal abortion is a violation of a range of human rights, including the right to life, health, information and to be free from torture and inhuman or degrading treatment. In Ireland, the jails are not full of women and their doctors for having abortions and its maternal mortality rates are low. However, this is partly the case because Ireland effectively outsources its human rights obligations to other countries.

Ireland was chosen as a focus country well over a year ago for this campaign because it has one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the world and we believed it would be important to provide thorough analysis of the human rights consequences of the abortion laws and practices in Ireland after the extremely limited legal reform of 2013. A further impetus for choosing Ireland was the death of Savita Halappanavar. The circumstances of her death unveiled how dangerously uncertain the narrow risk to life ground required by the Constitution was. It still shows today that if the law had provided for a risk to health ground, as required under international human rights law, Savita Halappanavar could be alive today.

Ireland has a very good domestic human rights track record in many areas. Regrettably, it is not so here. I honestly hope that the Irish State does not look short-sightedly at the international interest in and attention to Ireland's marriage equality referendum vote. The very idea of extending civil marriage to same-sex couples was an acutely sensitive, if not controversial, subject in Ireland just a few years ago and yet it managed to get cross-party support for this and 62% of the electorate voted for it. Ireland became just the 20th state in the world to permit civil marriage equality. Ireland has moved so far so quickly on marriage equality but it makes the treatment of women and girls in its Constitution, laws and practices all the more jarring. The eyes of the world are on this Government and also on this Parliament. This committee is the interface between the Government and the electorate at this critical juncture.

The root of the human rights violations, pain, fear and trauma of the women and girls in this report is the 1983 amendment to the Constitution. As the UN Human Rights Committee pointed out to Ireland in July 2014, the State's Constitution is no excuse for these human rights violations no matter what the public mood or vote is. It must be heartening to the committee that in the case of abortion, polling has repeatedly shown that the Irish public is on the side of human rights. Ireland is a noted champion of human rights and indeed on gender equality on the international stage. Amnesty International has worked with Ireland's UN missions in New York and Geneva for many years on women's rights. The Government's review of its foreign policy, which was published in January 2015, reaffirmed its commitment to advancing gender equality and yet Ireland's domestic position on women's and girls' human rights related to abortion is deeply regressive and in violation of international human rights which it works abroad to protect. This is also Ireland's final year on the UN Human Rights Council. Ireland is the co-facilitator of the UN negotiations on the post-2015 development agenda. Is it not time to align its domestic law on women's rights with its global vision for the world's women and girls? This committee can play a crucial role in this and should it take this issue on, Amnesty International stands ready to be of assistance to it.

Our report is the result of research and interviews carried out by Amnesty International between September 2014 and April 2015 in Ireland and England. It includes the testimonies of women, health care providers and civil society organisations. We are indebted to all who contributed to the report. It reviews the compliance of Irish law and policy on abortion with international human rights standards. It finds both seriously wanting.

Ms Christina Zampas is the principal author. She wrote the report, is our senior legal adviser at Amnesty International Ireland and is a noted legal expert in this field. In that capacity, she has conducted research into the legal systems on abortion across the world, particularly in Europe, and she is best placed to speak on what she found in Ireland.