The Home Office in London last month won its appeal against an immigration tribunal ruling involving Co Derry woman Emma DeSouza. She explains why it is important for her to continue with the case.
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I was raised Irish. It is integral to my culture and my heritage, it is simply who I am.
The people of Northern Ireland remain British citizens even if they identify as Irish according to the courts.
A startling decision that strikes at the foundations of Northern Ireland’s peace process and creates a profound divide between the two main communities.
It also serves to highlight an uncomfortable truth; the British Government has given up on the Good Friday Agreement.
I fear that the intermutual ambition and hope to shape a society of equals during the peace talks has all but dissipated.
The initiative to take a generous rights based approach to Northern Ireland has given way to convenience.
What this ruling exposed was that the British government has failed to legislate key provisions of the Good Friday Agreement into domestic UK law and instead of bringing legislation in line with the letter and the spirit of the agreement the Government would prefer to bend it, reinterpret it, rewrite it even.
The provision in question is the ‘birthright’ protection, which recognises the entitlement of all the people of Northern Ireland to identify themselves and be accepted as Irish or British or both.
A provision that was essential in order to maintain and respect the delicate identity balance that exists in Northern Ireland. Brexit is overshadowing this ruling and as a result is cloaking the unravelling of fundamental rights.
The effects of last month’s ruling can still be felt reverberating across Northern Ireland.
Despite repeated appeals the UK Home Office has now successfully argued that NI citizens have no right to choose their nationality, but rather - they are permitted to identify on a personal level as Irish, yet are in fact British at birth.
This sets a dangerous precedent - reducing an integral right to choose one’s own national identity - in this case to identify as and be accepted as Irish- into a right to merely 'feel' Irish.
The court ruling exposed a failure on behalf of the UK government to incorporate the birthright provisions of the Good Friday Agreement into domestic UK law, while the Irish government upheld their commitments as co-guarantors nearly twenty years ago.
Under international law, if domestic law is out of step with commitments to a treaty, then there’s an onus on the government to bring domestic legislation in line with said commitment. Instead, however, the government is attempting to re-write this provision without the consent of the people of the Island of Ireland.
Identity in Northern Ireland was at the centre of decades of violence and conflict, the Good Friday Agreement sought to respect that identity balance and by doing so, remove identity as a source of conflict.
I was 11 when the Agreement came into place, young enough to grow up believing in the agreement but not young enough to have escaped the troubles unscathed. As a child I understood that I was born and live on the island of Ireland. I knew there were safe places and not safe places and that was often determined by your religious upbringing and identity.
That is the heart of our case and why for us we cannot give up.
There is something so unjust, so inherently wrong with the government foisting British citizenship on those who do not want it. On forcing Irish citizens to first accept that they are British, declare themselves as British and renounce being British in order be accepted as exclusively Irish.
We’ve met families that have lost years in court fighting against this conferral, families that cried whilst renouncing British citizenship and families that simply moved away, from their homes, their families, their livelihoods.
No-one should be forced to adopt or renounce a citizenship they’ve never held in order to access rights.
Peace in Northern Ireland is predicated on the principles of equality, parity of esteem and mutual respect which is why we must all work together, with generosity, to demonstrate our shared determination to build an ambitious rights based society founded on these principles.
Many have asked me why I won’t accept British citizenship.
The answer is simple: I’m not British. I was raised Irish. It is integral to my culture and my heritage, it is simply who I am.
