Bertie: Spreading the News

We got up early this morning. After breakfast, we shot off to the Palais Wilson to meet with members of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. First, we caught up with Virginia Bras Gomes, who had visited North Belfast in May of last year for the Residents' Jury hearing on the regeneration of Girdwood.

She brought with her Eibe Riedel, who was particularly interested in mental health issues. We spoke to them for about half an hour, going over the issues we wished them to raise with the British government.

We then made other arrangements to meet the rest of the committee in the afternoon where ourselves and other organisations who are working on human rights tried to make sure the right questions were asked.

I was most impressed with the numbers of committee members who attended the briefing by the different organisations, and quite a few showed a great interest in our issues of mental health, employment, education, housing and children's right to play.

Now, we're looking forward to tomorrow when the committee will be quizzing our government on issues important to the people in North Belfast! It was nice to hear that there was interest in our trip to the UN from both CityBeat and the Belfast News Letter.