Patrick Corrigan

It's just turned Christmas Day in the Corrigan household. Our three elves are all in bed and Santa Claus is expected anytime now. Being a hi-tech family, we've been tracking his progress across the world on the NORAD website , which...

Having just attended my boys' nativity plays (well done everyone at All Children's Primary in Newcastle, Co Down!) my mind wanders to the series of flagrant human rights abuses related in the biblical tale and how they might be...

Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World (Hardback, 640 pages, Allen Lane, rrp £25, available £17.50) Samantha Power is mostly famous for one thing on this side of the Atlantic. She was the foreign...

As previously blogged , I got along to the handover yesterday of the advice from the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission to the UK government on the shape and content of a NI Bill of Rights. Hours before the advice had even been...

Today is international Human Rights Day and, ten years after the Multi-Party (Belfast/Good Friday) Agreement , we will finally see the advice on the shape and content of a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland handed over by the NI Human...

Family members of those 'disappeared' during the Northern Ireland conflict have made an appeal – probably a last throw of the dice – for information as to the whereabouts of the remains of their loved ones. Amnesty supporter and actor...

Does evil exist? Does it matter? I'm prompted to ask by the front-page headline in my morning metro (in London today): " The 'pure evil' of Shannon mother ". The description comes from the policeman heading up the case into the three...

Great news today as over 100 countries line up in Oslo to sign the Convention on Cluster Munitions, a treaty for which Amnesty's members and allies worldwide have battled long and hard. The fact that the Republic of Ireland is one of...

After a successful brothel raid by the PSNI in south Belfast at the end of last week, Amnesty generated a flurry of media interest in our campaign to secure protection for the rescued victims of human trafficking. We remain concerned...

With less than a fortnight to go before the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission gives the Government its long-awaited advice on the scope and substance of a proposed NI Bill of Rights, the BBC's local flagship politics programme...

Last week I demonstrated unusual prescience when I warned on this blog that UK policing urgently risked a slippery slope towards ever-increasing Taser deployment. On Monday the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith will announce that up to 30...

Hopes are riding high on an Obama presidency. Not least among human rights campaigners in America and internationally who have had a tough few years trying to reconcile old fashioned concepts like the Geneva Conventions and the taboo...

Where was your Chief Constable last week? If they were among the 15,000 top cops from around the world attending the International Association of the Chiefs of Police conference in San Diego, maybe it’s time to start worrying...

The front pages displayed on the weekend news-stands suffered from no shortage of ‘Strictly Come X-Factor, Get Me Out of Here’ non-stories. Rather fewer front pages were given over, however, to the reporting of the deaths of two Royal...

Get yourself over to Telegraph Blogs for the latest on the likelihood of the UK having its very own truth and reconciliation commission (to deal with the legacy of the Northern Ireland conflict). We at Amnesty are pretty clear about...

How do you convince policy-makers and decison-makers in the education sector that they ought to be mainstreaming human rights education within the school system? That human rights are so self-evidently "a good thing" that they ought to...

Further to my blog of August 29th , for International Day of the Disappeared , when I listed the names of eleven of Northern Ireland's disappeared, it seems that the partial remains of one, Danny McIlhone, have been unearthed in county...

This afternoon I was on Queen's Radio , the student station at Queen's University Belfast, discussing the problem of rape with senior officer Detective Superintendent Karen Baxter of the PSNI and Laura Mulholland of the Students' Union...

A most welcome speech today from Denis Bradley, co-chair of the Consultative Group on the Past in Northern Ireland. In the speech, he declared more openly than ever before that the report from the Group would not be recommending any...

In the week that saw the United States elect a new President, it is good to see Amnesty USA launching a new blog, Human Rights Now , bringing together and improving the blogging platform for their previous blog strands. I have already...