Ms Elaine Crory:

I completely agree. The bill of rights is like a building block upon which a rights-based society is going to be built. We do not have a good public conversation around rights and what they are. Rights are almost used in public narratives like a cudgel, such as a person claiming it is his or her right to do X and this conflicts with another person's right to do Y. As a result, they are going to have a bit of an argument about it. As opposed to talking about human rights, we are talking about the rights of particular communities. In the North, that always means the two communities, although there are many more. That is the narrative.

This is made worse by the fact that, as has been pointed out, we really need the bill of rights to come from Stormont and to be signed off by Westminster, but there is no drive in either of them. While there has been some work done at Stormont level in this regard, it was not fully in a collective or shared way. Many of the large unionist parties will not participate or sign it off, which means that it will not get to the Secretary of State.

Additionally, there is a negative narrative around rights in general coming from the UK Government in recent years. There is talk of leaving the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights. There is much talk of rights as a barrier and a thing which holds the process of government down, as opposed to a tool or a key that unlocks improvements in people's lives. That is a problem we face as well. There is no impetuous coming from the Secretary of State that might coax Stormont along a bit. While the work that went on in the last mandate to produce a draft bill of rights was very good, unless we can get around that conversation about what rights are and how they are really tools towards freedom and the thriving of every community and every person, then we will not get that sign-on from unionist parties, especially if there is no impetuous from Westminster. That may or may not change in a couple of weeks, but there certainly is no positive talk about bills of rights coming from that direction either.