"Holding Governments to Account?" by Thomas Hammarberg
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Abstract

As a senior human rights advocate—both at the United Nations and the Council of Europe, as well as my homeland of Sweden—it is perhaps notable that I root much of my work in my experiences in Northern Ireland more than fifty years ago.

I was then a relatively young journalist working for a major Swedish newspaper, and I had already been to Greece (then under the colonels’ dictatorship), Israel (to cover the 1967 war), and other hot spots around the world. So when I was asked by Amnesty International to go on a mission to Northern Ireland to look at internment, I did not expect to be shocked. And yet, I was. And that experience has stayed with me ever since.

I have become more and more convinced over the years that my experience in Northern Ireland was symptomatic of a broader problem which is of immediate relevance to the United Kingdom, but also globally.

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