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aoife duffy 

Contact: aoifeduffyyahoo.com

Supervisor: Dr. Kathleen Cavanaugh

Qualifications: BA (Applied Psychology), University College Cork; M.Phil (International Peace Studies), Trinity College Dublin; LLM (International Human Rights Law), National University of Ireland, Galway.

Aoife Duffy is a PhD candidate and a doctoral fellow at the Irish Centre for Human Rights. Ms. Duffy was awarded an IRCHSS/DFA scholarship under its conflict resolution strand (2009-2012).

An examination of the politico-legal underpinnings of liberty rights restrictions during the state of emergency

Certain liberty rights restrictions appear to go hand in glove with standard governmental responses to the state of emergency. House arrest, detention for interrogation purposes, detention without trial, to name but a few, have been used by governments to combat various threats that impinge on state security. Such measures (emergency-liberty rights restrictions) are commonly described as ’preventative’ rather than ’punitive’, and form one strand of the wider repertoire of emergency powers enacted. However, rather than being ’preventative’, administrative detention measures often become completely intertwined in the course of the conflict, and their use a flashpoint for opponents of the regime. The research critically examines three instances where detention without trial was used by the British to curtail end of Empire insurgencies, i.e. in Malaya, Kenya and Cyprus. Taking advantage of recently declassified materials from the Hanslope Disclosure, careful consideration is given to the form the detention laws take, the subjective experiences of the detention regime and any legacy issues that flow therefrom. Using discourse analysis to study primary materials (local ordinances, Hansard debates, official correspondence between departments, correspondence between the colony and Whitehall, eyewitness testimony, medical reports, and autopsies), it was possible to build a theoretical model of emergency-liberty rights restrictions, which includes such elements as racialization, the significance of violence and the threat of violence, and the concomitant culture of impunity. The work is interdisciplinary and draws primarily from law and legal history, but also incorporates theoretical approaches taken from philosophy and psychology. Finally, the thesis explores some contemporary themes related to the aforementioned cases, for example, the continuity of a denial discourse, the intransigence of the legal framework in the independent post-colonial state, and investigates more recent emergency-liberty rights restrictions in the United Kingdom and territories under British control.

Publications

’“Detainee as Exile: Theorizing the Politico-legal Underpinnings of Executive Detention”, 7 Interdisciplinary Journal of Human Rights Law (2012-2013).

’A Truth Commission for Northern Ireland?’, 4(1) International Journal of Transitional Justice (2010).

’Expulsion to Face Torture? Non-refoulement in International Law’, 20(3) International Journal of Refugee Law (2008), pp.373-390.

’Indigenous Peoples’ Land Rights: Developing a Sui Generis Approach to Ownership and Restitution’, 15(4) International Journal of Minority and Group Rights (2008), pp. 505-538.


Conferences

’Gardens of (In)Justice: Detention without trial in the British Empire’, Critical Legal Conference, Stockholm, September 14-16, 2012.

’Deciphering the Nomos of the Camp’, International Studies Association, Montreal, March 2011.

’Human Rights and Conflict in Darfur’, War, Virtual War and Human Security Conference, Budapest, May 2008.


Select Guest Lectures

’The Right to Silence/Fair Trial Rights (Article 6) and Security & Liberty of Persons (Article 5)’, LLM International Human Rights Law, Irish Centre for Human Rights, November 2012.

’Cultural Relativity and Women’s Reproductive Rights’, BA Connect (Human Rights), National University of Ireland, Galway, March 2012.

’Women’s Human Rights; Women & Conflict; Gender & Health Crises’, BA Connect (Human Rights) module, National University of Ireland, Galway, January 2012.

’Executive Detention in the British Empire’, University of Washington Summer School, Irish Centre for Human Rights, August 2011.

’The Camp as the Hidden Matrix of Modern Politics?’ LLM International Human Rights Law, Irish Centre for Human Rights, October 2010, November 2011 and February 2013.

’Cultural Relativity v. Universality in Human Rights’, BA Connect (Human Rights) module, National University of Ireland, Galway, Sept-Oct 2010.

 

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