Jacob William Smith

Executive Summary

The policing of protests in Northern Ireland systematically breaches the European Convention on Human Rights, particularly the Article 11 right to freedom of assembly.

These breaches are so serious and systemic that we conclude that would-be protesters could, and should, challenge them in court to restore respect for rights.

The Troubles and the ongoing presence of paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland inappropriately shape how the authorities treat protests: regulations and policing treat a wide range of protest groups as if they were promoting sectarian causes or identities, when they are not.

The experience of an excessive ‘security’- focused treatment of the right to protest in Northern Ireland, as if all protesters presented a serious threat of public disorder or violence, has a discouraging effect on protests—especially by grassroots groups and small organisations. Our research suggests that people are avoiding staging peaceful protests they have a human right to hold.

Would-be protesters in Northern Ireland face an intimidating and rights-violating amount of red tape. For example, people organising a moving protest (that is, a march) must notify the Parades Commission or the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) 28 days in advance unless the Parades Commission (in consultation with the PSNI) deems that it is not ‘reasonably practical’ for them to do so. We did not find any judicial authority that shows clearly what ‘reasonably practical’ means.

The notification requirements in Northern Ireland are much more onerous than in England and Wales, where, under the Public Order Act 1986 (POA), march or procession organisers must give written notice to the police at least six days before the event.

We conclude that the notification requirement in Northern Ireland is unnecessary and amounts to a de facto requirement that moving protests must be authorised by the government. Our research suggests that it also has a discouraging (or ‘chilling’) effect on protest rights, which can prevent people from protesting even when they have a human right to do so.

Additionally, in Northern Ireland, people must pay to protest: local authorities impose insurance requirements that are preventing grassroots groups and individual activists from protesting—sometimes because of the requirement itself, and sometimes because widespread confusion means people pay to avoid a risk of a crackdown.

At least one local authority also forbids protesters – and anyone else – from ‘enter[ing] into public discussion’, giving speeches, singing songs or playing music on any public land, in what we regard as a blatant violation of free expression rights and, in practice, an open invitation to arbitrary policing. Some local authorities also require up to three months to consider a protester’s application, depending on where they wish to protest.

Furthermore, responses to our freedom-of-information requests indicate that many local authorities do not have a policy on protests on public land, an absence that pushes protesters toward the procedural burdens and expense of applying for the protest to be held as an ‘event’ – as if it were a music festival or political rally. This categorisation of protests as ‘events’ means that some local authorities require protest organisers hold up to £10 million worth of public liability insurance cover – a task that is almost impossible for small organisations and individual activists. Further, there appears to be a lack of decision-making criteria across some local councils, creating a risk of arbitrariness and discrimination.

We have also heard allegations of discriminatory policing when it comes to the policing of protests in Northern Ireland, with other evidence strengthening these concerns. The allegations we heard involved claims of worse treatment of protesters who are female or non-binary, members of minoritised racial groups, or from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. We were not able to prove that the allegations were true; however, we regard the overall tenor of the concerns as consistent enough to suggest a breakdown in trust between protesters for a range of causes and the police who are meant to protect everyone at a protest location from harm. Such a lack of trust, in turn, indicates that the authorities should explore whether systemic bias or officers’ own views about – for example – reproductive rights are impacting the policing of protests.

Our investigation revealed that there were 57 complaints to the Police Ombudsman for NI about protest-related policing between May 2022 and April 2025, with the majority of these complaints coming from men. While there are a range of potential reasons for this gender disparity, we are concerned that men may feel more empowered to complain than women do, or may be more likely to believe that complaining will be effective.

We heard claims that the police in Northern Ireland (NI) are failing to protect protesters from violence or threats of violence, including gender-based violence.

Systemic change is required at all levels as per our recommendations below, including:

The UK government should remove the 28-day notification requirement for moving protests in NI, and therefore the 14-day notification requirement for counter-protests.

The UK government, together with the NI Assembly, should change the law so as to remove non-sectarian protests from the remit of the Parades Commission, which has a mandate to focus predominantly on ‘sectarian’ parades – that is, parades that celebrate Protestant/unionist/loyalist or Catholic/nationalist/republican identity as such, many of which have been contentious. Such a move will help clarify that protests in NI are not necessarily sectarian even if they are political, and that they do not necessarily pose the same risk to public safety or public order as parades explicitly associated with sectarian identity.

Local authorities in NI should refrain from direct or indirect overreach on protest rights (for both static and moving protests) via onerous administrative requirements, such as public liability insurance. They should remove any such measures already in existence.

The NI Executive’s Department of Justice and the NI Policing Board should ensure accountability for any police who violate protest rights or who allegedly commit crimes such as assault during protests. Authorities within the PSNI should ensure that officers are extensively trained on protest and free expression rights, gender justice and non-discrimination. They should also implement all the recommendations in the NI Policing Board’s 5 Year Human Rights Review from 2024, including those from previous reviews which remain works in progress.

Additionally, we urge international human rights experts to visit NI – as well as the rest of the UK – and address the serious and increasing restrictions on protest rights in the region. For example, we encourage the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association to undertake a country visit to the UK to consider the present state of protest rights (with a special focus on NI) and make recommendations for reform.

Prevent, a UK counter-extremism programme that affects thousands of young
children and teenagers throughout Great Britain every year, is both a policing and a
surveillance programme. Despite Home Office portrayals of the programme as
concerned with ‘safeguarding’, we show that the police are using Prevent referrals
as a way to gather ‘intelligence’ – in fact, Fixed Intelligence Management Units
(FIMUs) have primary responsibility for the Prevent process within individual police
forces. The government has told us that most people referred to Prevent are never
notified of that fact.