Patrick Corrigan

Dreams From My Father, Barack Obama , (Paperback, 464 pages, Canongate Books, rrp £8.99, available £4.99) On Tuesday I will go along to Queen’s University Belfast for an event, to be addressed by the United States Consul General, Susan...

If you missed 'In Prison My Whole Life' at the Belfast Film Festival last April, there's another chance to see it tonight and tomorrow at Belfast's Queen's Film Theatre . It's a powerful, fast-moving film documentary, dealing with the...

You read it here first. Sort of… Back in August I speculated that deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness could soon find himself in the Philippines aiding the search for peace in the Mindanao region of the country between the...

That's just one of the hilarious headlines generated by Daily Mail-o-matic , which gives you a new Daily Mail-style headline every time you hit the refresh button. "Now updated to include 2009 bogeymen!" the site cheerfully tells us...

Pundits are swopping versions of how the lessons of Northern Ireland conflict resolution might be applied to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Steven King – one-time advisor to David Trimble – gives his analysis in the Irish Examiner...

I've done it. Have you? Yes, nominated your favourite blogs and bloggers for the 2009 Irish Blog Awards . Among my nominees for this year are, in various categories and in no particular order: Bobballs! , Iced Coffee Words , Alan in...

Newspaper pundit Newton Emerson regularly devotes all or some of his twice-weekly Irish News column to attacking Amnesty International, for everything from our award-winning education work in primary schools, to our position – or at...

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...