This is a Guest piece by Seán O'Connell & Gerry Liston of Ceartas:Irish Lawyers for Human Rights. Ceartas is an independent non-profit organisation that seeks to promote and enforce human rights standards internationally through innovative legal actions. In their guest piece, Ceartas look at the recent decision of the Irish Medical Council to conduct a visit of accreditation of the RCSI Bahrain’s medical training facilities this year. Ceartas, through a report released last year, maintain the Medical Council are bound to consider relevant international human rights standards in determining the facilities appropriateness for delivering medical training and the award of Irish degree qualifications.
You can read previous Bulletin articles on this issue from October 2013, June 2013 and April 2013.
Ceartas – Irish Lawyers for Human Rights welcomes the announcement of the Irish Medical Council (IMC) to visit and accredit the medical training facilities affiliated with the Bahrain programme of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) this year. The IMC confirmed that plans to conduct the accreditation as well as a detailed programme of interviews, assessments and visits to the training hospitals. The aim of the visit is to assess the appropriateness of Bahrain’s facilities for delivering training to Irish standards. The visit also represents a rare instance of external oversight in a country off-limits to human rights organisations.
The announcement came at a hearing of the Joint Committee on Education and Social Protection last week where the IMC, the RCSI and the National Universities of Ireland were invited to respond following a submission made by Ceartas to the Committee in February on the accreditation of the RCSI Bahrain. This submission followed from a Ceartas report highlighting the international human rights obligations of the IMC when accrediting the medical training facilities of the RCSI Bahrain, pursuant to the Medical Practitioners Act of 2007. The report documents systematic violations against medical practitioners and patients by the Bahraini Government in a hospital facilities used for the clinical training of RCSI Bahrain students since democratic protests began in early 2011. Similar reports conducted by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Medecins Sans Frontiere and Physicians for Human Rights have identified cases of alleged torture, arbitrary detention and practices of discriminatory medical treatment against patients, especially pro-reform protesters.
Both the RCSI and the NUI cited internal reviews of the medical training facilities in support of continuing to award Irish medical degrees pending full accreditation from the IMC. Despite persistent allegations since 2011, senior RCSI representative, Prof. Jim Finucane stated it was “inconceivable” torture took place within the hospitals. Such claims cast doubt over the RCSI’s capability and willingness to objectively review affiliated hospitals. The Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore has expressed the position of the Government in October of last year, stating the “overall human rights environment in Bahrain continues to be of serious concern.” Reports emerging from Bahrain continue to highlight the ongoing oppression of medics, including Dr. Fatima Haji who was questioned after giving an interview to France 24 on the impact of tear-gassing in Bahrain.
In welcoming the decision of the IMC to visit Bahrain this year Ceartas reiterated that the IMC, as a public body, is bound to consider the ongoing human rights violations in the medical training facilities used by the RCSI Bahrain. These considerations must form a central tenet of the accreditation procedure in determining the suitability of the facilities for medical training under Irish law. Failure to do so risks violating national, EU and international law and in turn validating a system that is routinely accused of torture, violations of medical neutrality and discrimination - none of which would be acceptable in Ireland.
Ceartas (Irish Lawyers for Human Rights) represent a group of legal professionals, academics and activists seeking the promotion and protection of international human rights from Ireland. Ceartas aims to bring actions through collaborations between lawyers and individuals from a variety of backgrounds, focusing on an interdisciplinary approach, working with partner organisations overseas to develop innovative legal actions for the enforcement of human rights.
Click here to find out more about working with Ceartas.