IRELAND
Amnesty International
05 June 2014
Disturbing revelations about an unmarked “mass grave” of up to 800 babies and children found in Tuam, County Galway, must prompt urgent answers from the Irish Government about the wider issue of past child abuse in state-run and sponsored institutions, said Amnesty International today.
“This shocking case needs immediate attention and answers from the Irish Government. A thorough investigation must be carried out into how these children died and if ill-treatment, neglect or other human rights abuses factored into their deaths. We also need to know why these children were not afforded the respect of a proper and dignified burial,” said John Dalhuisen, Europe and Central Asia Programme Director at Amnesty International.
Irish and international media have reported that the remains of 796 babies and children were found in a septic tank in Tuam. The site, on the grounds of an institution run by a religious order of nuns, was operated as a ‘home’ for unmarried mothers, reportedly between 1925 and 1961, at a time when bearing a child outside marriage carried significant social stigma. Reports suggest that a local historian compiled information on the remains, and it was brought it to the attention of the Irish Government last year.
“The Irish Government must not view this and other cases as merely historic and beyond its human rights obligations,” said John Dalhuisen.
The international human rights framework of law emerged during the period in which these children lived and died. If the home closed in 1961, it is possible that some of the deaths occurred at a time when the European Convention on Human Rights was in force. Even before then, Ireland was aware of the internationally agreed norms expected of it in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
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