But in practice, the NIHRC has become something very different. It has evolved into a silent witness, a facilitator, of systemic discrimination against Nationalists. This article is an exposé of what it actually does behind closed doors; betrayal.
The Watchdog That Will Not Watch
- unlawful secret-evidence procedures
- judicial decisions obtained through deceit,· prosecutorial misconduct
- Department of Justice control over supposedly independent bodies
- And discrimination affecting potentially thousands of Nationalists
Over the last three years, the Commission was repeatedly presented with evidence of serious institutional wrongdoing affecting Nationalist families. Each time, the response was refusal, indifference, and silence.
1. Prosecutorial Misconduct Ignored
The Department of Justice refused to exercise its statutory power of referral of indelible evidence of prosecutorial misconduct to the Criminal Justice Inspectorate. The NIHRC was told. It washed its hands and refused to act.
2. Judgments Obtained by Deceit
Courts accepted that State agents misled the court. But because the deceit was “directed at the court, not the victim,” the courts treated it as non-actionable. The NIHRC raised no concern.
3. Unlawful Closed Material Procedures
In the Frizzell and Lundy cases, the High Court secretly imposed Closed Material Procedures (CMPs) without legal authority. Hundreds of Nationalist Legacy Families may be affected. This isn't just my analysis. KRW Law quantified 'scores if not hundreds of cases.' I told the NIHRC. They still refused to investigate. When the Commission won't act even when mainstream lawyers quantify the potential number of case affected, you have to ask: what would it take?
4. Victims’ Pensions Board (VPB) Capture by the DoJ
The VPB doesn't just 'rely' on the Department of Justice, it is the Department of Justice. The Board has zero independent staff. No offices. No control over its own files. DOJ civil servants prepare the case summaries. DOJ contracts the medical assessor. And when you challenge them? DOJ lawyers appear for the Board. You're fighting the DOJ judged by the DOJ, in a system run by the DOJ. The NIHRC knows this. It just won't say it out loud.
The Email That Exposed the Problem
The Judgment Laundering Problem
The NIHRC’s (24 November 2025) practice of declining observation while stating that it will “consider the implications of any judgment” represents a structural departure from Paris Principles standards. The Paris Principles are the international rules that say a human rights commission must be independent. The NIHRC's own practices, refusing to observe hearings, only reading judgments, breach those rules. It's not just failing; it's failing to meet the basic standard for its own existence.
The Commission’s model replaces independent monitoring with reliance on judicial summaries of proceedings, producing a four-stage cycle:
Stage 1: Unobserved hearings: Procedural dynamics that reveal inequality of arms occur without independent scrutiny. Oral submissions, judicial questioning and institutional behaviour that may show structural bias remain undocumented except in the court’s own selective record.
Stage 2: Filtered records: Written judgments provide the court’s interpretation of proceedings, not a full transcript. Judgments summarise and frame issues through judicial priorities, omitting exchanges that may reveal procedural imbalance. This is normal legal practice but creates a filtered record.
Stage 3: Secondary reliance: NIHRC assessment focuses on the judgment rather than the underlying process. Treating the judgment as the authoritative record prevents identification of avoided arguments, downplayed evidence or procedural disparities that may have arisen.
Stage 4: Circular validation: Because NIHRC commentary relies exclusively on judgments, judicial reasoning becomes the sole measure of human-rights compliance. This eliminates external accountability and reinforces the perspectives of the institutions being monitored.
This is not oversight. It is judgment laundering. An oversight body that relies on judicial summaries becomes part of the system it is supposed to scrutinise.
Institutional Learning Through Suppression
This did not happen by accident. First, the system learned that it could rely on “transferred deceit”: wrongdoing directed at the court, not the victim, was treated as non-actionable. Then the Supreme Court confirmed this was “not a point of principle or practice of general public importance”. Think about that. The UK Supreme Court looked at prosecutorial misconduct and judgments obtained by deceit and said they weren't 'of public importance.' That's when the NIHRC should have roared. Instead, silence. And now we have secret hearings in criminal cases.
Next, institutions learned they could use unlawful secret hearings, because no one would intervene. Finally, they learned they could capture the VPB entirely.
At every stage, the NIHRC watched, did nothing, and the system adapted. It did not just fail to prevent discrimination — it facilitated the conditions in which discrimination could evolve. That is not oversight. That is institutional R&D for inequality.
Internal Memos: The Smoking Gun
On 4 October 2006, an internal NIHRC memo, never intended for public view, revealed that the Commission held a “watching brief” over a wrongful-conviction case because it had concerns. Those concerns were never investigated. Never disclosed. Never acted on.
On 26 September 2008, another internal memo, the Commission became concerned the suppression of the same case might be exposed: “Damage limitations might be what we're facing here”.
The memos prove the Commission knew there were problems, chose institutional silence, and feared they might be exposed. The pattern remains unchanged today.
The Human Impact: Thousands of Nationalist Victims Exposed
This failure of oversight is not an abstract institutional problem. It has real human consequences. The VPB estimates about 50,000 people suffered conflict-related injuries. Nationalist victims with permanent conflict-related injuries caused by the state count in the thousands. The judicial review on 16 December 2025 will test whether this systemic bias can still be challenged, or if it has become permanent.
When the High Court imposed unlawful CMPs in the Frizzell and Lundy cases, excluding families from key evidence they should have been entitled to, the NIHRC was informed.
Its response: No interest. No intervention. No observation.
Without external monitoring, secret hearings become unchallengeable.
The Result: A Human-Rights System that Works Only for the State
The NIHRC’s refusal to:
· investigate,
· intervene,
· observe, or
· monitor
means the entire human-rights architecture created by the Good Friday Agreement has been hollowed out. Systemic discrimination becomes more embedded and harder to fix. Nationalists are left with:
· no oversight,
· no watchdog,
· no accountability mechanism,
· and no institutional support when the State acts improperly.
This is not a failure of one case or one person. This is structural, systemic, and deeply political.
What Comes Next
So what now? First, the NIHRC must attend the 16 December hearing, not to 'consider the judgment' later, but to fulfill its statutory duty of independent monitoring in real time. Second, the Commission must explain why it ignored prosecutorial misconduct, transferred deceit, CMPs and VPB capture. Third, we need to ask whether a body that has learned to be silent can ever learn to speak for us again. If not, it's time to ask what comes after the NIHRC, because the NIHRC is not fit for purpose.
The Commission's own practices are so far from the Paris Principles that international bodies like the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (GANHRI) and European Network of National Human Rights Institutions (ENNHRI) might reconsider whether the NIHRC still deserves its 'A' status accreditation.
⏩ Christy Walsh was stitched up by the British Ministry of Defence in a no jury trial and spent many years in prison as a result.
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