As threats to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights circulate, Professor Geraldine Van Bueren considers the implications of such a move.
She writes: 'The European Convention on Human Rights is very much taken for granted in the UK but without it, people in Northern Ireland would be imprisoned for homosexuality; prisoners would not have access to lawyers and newspapers would be subject to gagging orders for commenting on civil cases like the Thalidomide case. These are rights that no democratic state in the 21st century would like to be without.'