Kenyan Mother Sues Northern Ireland Government Over Racism

A Kenyan-born woman is taking legal action against the Northern Ireland Executive over what she describes as a failure to implement a key pledge of the region’s Racial Equality Strategy.

Maureen Hamblin, a mother of three originally from Kenya and now living in County Antrim, has filed a Judicial Review against the Executive Office, challenging the lack of promised reforms to legislation aimed at protecting people from racial discrimination.

Hamblin had reported facing repeated incidents of racial abuse since arriving in Northern Ireland in 2014, including an incident in 2023 at a park in Newtownabbey when she and her children were subjected to racial slurs and demeaning noises.

According to her, the legal action focuses on the failure to review the Race Relations Order (Northern Ireland) 1997, a legislative proposal identified as the top priority in the Racial Equality Strategy 2015-2025.

That strategy, signed off by former First Minister Peter Robinson and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, aimed to provide a framework for government departments and other institutions to address racial inequalities, eradicateracism and hate crime, and promotegood race relations and social cohesion.

Furthermore, her petition also challenged the Executive Office for failing to act on recommendations by the Equality Commission to strengthen the legislation and provide a timetable for reform.

Following the 2023 incident, Hamblin spoke publicly about daily experiences of microaggressions and subsequently opted to homeschool her children due to concernsover racist treatment at school.

Solicitor for Hamblin, John McGrath of Andrea Reid & Co, stated the importance of the promised legislative reforms to better protect ethnic minorities was more important than ever following another “summer of hate” in the north.

“The Executive has sat on its hands over this strategy for 10 years, and still there are no concrete plans for what was promised,” he told the Irish News.

The Executive Office, through its legal submissions, argued that the High Court lacked jurisdiction because the petitioner did not first pursue the statutory review process outlined in the Access to Information Act.

The respondent noted that an aggrieved applicant must seek review from the Commission on Administrative Justice before invoking the court’s jurisdiction and emphasised that the requested information contained personal and identifiable staff data, which is exempt from disclosure under data protection legislation.

They further argued that as a senior human resources officer, Hamblin already had routine internal access to the documents she requested.

The High Court noted that the statutory mechanisms established for dispute resolution must be exhausted before constitutional jurisdiction is invoked and found that Hamblin had not demonstrated any exceptional circumstances to bypass these procedures.

The court determined that it lacked jurisdiction to entertain the petition at this stage and struck it out. Each party was ordered to bear its own costs.

The first review hearing is scheduled for January 28, this year, at the High Court in Belfast.