Edmund Rice International

Follow the fortunes of our interns Jordan Wren and Cathal Ó Fainín via their respective blogs.

 The UN Development Programme releases a report every two years or so. The latest one is entitled, rather melodramatically, ‘The Rise of the South’. The full report is available online. For those who’ve been battling poverty over the last 10, 20, 30 , … 50 years, it’s good news. Yes, some countries are moving out [...]

From the moment Dr. Anne O’Gara (left), President of Marino Institute of Education, an associate college of Trinity College Dublin (TCD), and Dr Barbara O’Toole (right), stepped off the plane from Dublin in Geneva they were enthusiastic to attend, the 22nd Session of the Human Rights Council under the auspices of Edmund Rice International (ERI). [...]

 UN Photo/Jean-Marc Ferré  At the commencement of the 22nd Session of the Human Rights Council on 25th February, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, acknowledged the 20th-year anniversary of the Vienna Declaration and Plan of Action and described the VDPA as “the most significant overarching human rights document produced in the [...]

Following a two-year process and a series of workshops around the world on how better to implement Article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights on the ‘prohibition of incitement to national, racial and religious hatred’, the resulting Rabat Plan of Action was launched at the Human Rights Council in Geneva on 21st [...]

 This month ERI welcomed two new interns to Geneva, Jordan Wren from Australia and Cathal Ó Fainín from Ireland. Their internships will be for 3 months. Jordan is from Bacchus Marsh near Melbourne and is a past student of Loreto College in Ballarat where she first become involved in Edmund Rice camps. Jordan maintained her [...]

 “Climate change is the biggest human rights challenge of our time” says former Irish president and UN Human Rights High Commissioner Mary Robinson following the conclusion of the recent UN Climate Summit in Doha. “It’s undermining livelihoods—rights to food and safe water and health and education. It’s having people displaced by climate, and that can [...]

When I first heard of Edmund Rice, as an excited young recruit into Eddie Rice camps in Perth, I had no idea that my involvement with the Network would incite the passion for social justice and advocacy that has become such a fundamental part of my adult life. The more involved I became with various [...]

 “In some States, converts may face criminal prosecution, at times even including the death penalty, for offences such as ‘apostasy,’ ‘heresy,’ ‘blasphemy’ or ‘insult’ in respect of a religion or the country’s dominant tradition and values,” stated Heiner Bielefeldt, the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief when presenting his report to the [...]

Br Renato Llerena is a Christian Brother from the Latin American region, currently based in Cochabamba, Bolivia. He is currently in Geneva to learn more about the work of ERI and the Human Rights Council of the UN. Here is his report of the UPR of Ghana session which he attended.   Ghana has around 21 [...]