Publications

NIHRC Submission to the Executive Office’s Consultation on Truth Recovery – Mother and Baby Institutions, Magdalene Laundries and Workhouses, and their Pathways and Practices

Date produced: September 2024

Below is a summary of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission's (NIHRC) recommendations and messages.
You can also download the full document through the links provided.

Summary of Recommendations

2.9 The NIHRC recommends that the Executive Office ensures that a human rights-based approach is expressly stated as a foundation of the public inquiry into Mother and Baby Institutions, Magdalene Laundries and Workhouses in NI. This is with a view to providing a baseline on which the inquiry can build (including beyond human rights law) to ensure it is effective, rather than limiting its scope and consequently deeming it ineffective. This can be achieved through using phrasing such as “abuses and human rights violations” in determining the public inquiry’s scope.

2.14 The NIHRC recommends that the Executive Office ensures that there is an effective mechanism, within the public inquiry, to consider individual experiences and to establish the types of abuse and human rights violations that occurred across the relevant period, together with effective redress for individuals and preventative measures to ensure they can never happen again. To enable that, there must be meaningful engagement with victims and survivors and their representative organisations from the planning stages of the public inquiry through to implementation and evaluation of the inquiry’s recommendations.

2.24 The NIHRC recommends that the Executive Office ensures that the temporal scope of the public inquiry into Mother and Baby Institutions, Magdalene Laundries and Workhouses in NI is as expansive as possible. This is with a view to ensuring that there is no discrimination towards any victim and survivor and that there is a mechanism that effectively investigates the pathways and practices surrounding Mother and Baby Institutions, Magdalene Laundries and Workhouses, particularly in the context of family separation.

2.26 The NIHRC recommends that the Executive Office ensures that the inquiry considers the specific needs of different groups of women, and their families affected by the institution and the system that established and ran them.

2.36 The NIHRC recommends that the Executive Office ensures that a victim-centred approach is at the heart of every aspect of a public inquiry into Mother and Baby Institutions, Magdalene Laundries and Workhouses in NI. This should be a clear obligation within the legislation and terms of reference associated with the public inquiry.

2.37 The NIHRC recommends that the Executive Office ensures that a mechanism is included within the public inquiry process for evidencing and considering the effects on intragenerational and intergenerational relatives of victims and survivors of Mother and Baby Institutions, Magdalene Laundries and Workhouses in NI.

2.38 The NIHRC recommends that that the Executive Office ensures that that victims and survivors, and as appropriate their relatives, are meaningfully supported to be become core participants of a public inquiry into Mother and Baby Institutions, Magdalene Laundries and Workhouses in NI, if they so wish.

3.12 The NIHRC recommends that the Executive Office ensures that the focus of a public inquiry into Mother and Baby Institutions, Magdalene Laundries and Workhouses in NI is to establish what happened, why it happened, who was responsible and what can be done to prevent it from happening again. This must include a thorough, objective and impartial analysis pursuing all lines of inquiry.

3.13 The NIHRC recommends that the terms of reference are sufficiently flexible to enable the public inquiry to consider all evidence uncovered by or provided to it that is relevant. This must involve the meaningful involvement of victims and survivors within designing, participating in and engaging with the inquiry process, including in the drafting or altering of the terms of reference.

3.21 The NIHRC recommends that the Executive Office ensures that consideration is given to creating an expert advisory panel to the public inquiry that includes members with lived experience of Mother and Baby Institutions, Magdalene Laundries and Workhouses in NI.

3.22 The NIHRC recommends that the Executive Office ensures that the panel of the public inquiry should have discretion to make decisions, guided by the findings of the Truth Recovery Independent Panel, research of the Expert Panel and through consultation with victims and survivors of these institutions and their relatives. Any additional suggestion that is made based on robust evidence should be meaningfully considered for inclusion within scope of the public inquiry.

3.29 The NIHRC recommends that alleged human rights violations of the right to life, freedom from torture, and forced labour that the State knows about or ought to have known about within the institutions including those allegedly perpetrated by individuals, are also investigated, if not already.

3.33 The NIHRC recommends that the Executive Office ensures that any clause preventing duplication between the proposed new inquiry and the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry does not prevent the new inquiry from following any obvious and reasonable line of investigation for the purposes of its consideration of Mother and Baby Institutions, Magdalene Laundries and Workhouses in NI.

3.38 The NIHRC recommends that the Executive Office ensures that a public inquiry into Mother and Baby Institutions, Magdalene Laundries and Workhouses in NI adopts a victim-centred approach in the development, content and evolution of the inquiry’s terms of reference.

3.43 The NIHRC recommends that the Executive Office ensures that the public inquiry into Mother and Baby Institutions, Magdalene Laundries and Workhouses in NI has effective powers of compellability that are clearly set out. Balanced with the requirement to conduct a thorough investigation, this includes that a victim-centred approach is adopted regarding who can be compelled to be provide evidence and the type of information that can be compelled.

3.46 The NIHRC recommends that the Executive Office ensures a public inquiry into Mother and Baby Institutions, Magdalene Laundries and Workhouses in NI includes safeguarding mechanisms for the purposes of creating and maintaining a safe space for victims, survivors and their relatives to participate in and engage with the inquiry.

3.49 The NIHRC advises that the requirement to conduct reasonably prompt and expeditious investigations must not be used to rush its establishment without the support of victims and survivors.

3.57 The NIHRC recommends that the Executive Office ensures that there is a process for archiving the evidence and information sources recovered and collated by the Expert Panel, Truth Recovery Independent Panel and public inquiry. Access to and publication of information should only be limited where it is lawful, proportionate and necessary to do so.

4.11 The NIHRC advises that there is an obligation on the State to initiate effective investigations into disappearances and suspicious deaths and such investigations must be capable of ascertaining the presence or otherwise of unmarked graves. The NIHRC observes that one possibility might be for the public inquiry to have the power to order geophysical surveys and archaeological investigations as required.

5.3 The NIHRC recommends that the Executive Office ensures that the measures of financial redress and operational mechanisms connected to Mother and Baby Institutions, Magdalene Laundries and Workhouses in NI are developed, implemented and monitored in close consultation with victims and survivors, their relatives and representative organisations. Moreover, any decision taken in relation to financial redress should be communicated to victims and survivors in an accessible way to meet their specific needs.

6.5 The NIHRC recommends that the Executive Office ensures that staff and professionals working in or associated with the proposed public inquiry are given suitable, gender-sensitive, victim-centred, trauma-informed training in relation to truth recovery processes, transitional justice and human rights standards. This should be monitored and refreshed when necessary.

7.3 The NIHRC recommends that the Executive Office ensures that the public inquiry is resourced to the extent necessary to carry out an effective, human rights compliant investigation and is able to produce a robust record of all abuses and human rights violations that occurred in Mother and Baby Institutions, Magdalene Laundries and Workhouses in NI.

7.4 The NIHRC recommends that sufficient resources are set aside to implement the findings of the public inquiry into Mother and Baby Institutions, Magdalene Laundries and Workhouses in NI.

Click here to open: Consultation Response