Migrant Rights Centre Support for New Common Charter Welcomed

 

The Centre for Cross-Border studies today welcomed the support of Migrant Rights Centre Ireland (MRCI) for the New Common Charter for Cooperation Within and Between these Islands.

MRCI is the latest in a number of new supporters of the Charter including independent advice service, Advice NI, and Creative Spark, the Dundalk based centre for creativity and innovation.

The New Common Charter is the result of a sustained process of engagement by grassroots community organisations from Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland with the notion of cross-border, North-South, and East-West cooperation, and conversations with counterparts in England, Scotland and Wales. This has led to a vision of cooperation and what it should entail.

Principles of the Charter include support for:

• The sharing of local resources and services across boundaries
• Increasing opportunities to share information, knowledge of policy and best-practice within and across these islands
• Improving policy-making by matching it to realities on the ground
• Identifying cross-border opportunities to collaborate to solve shared problems or exploit common resources
• Promoting cross-border friendly relations and allowing for diffcult conversations
• Promoting a civil society that values diversity and is able to disagree respectfully

This work continues to encourage informed and motivated community organisations on the island of Ireland and Great Britain to be able to engage with policies and policy-makers on the value of cross-border cooperation and ensure that it addresses the needs of civic society.

If your organisation would like to endorse and add its name as a supporter of the New Common Charter, which you can download here, please email Megan McDermott on megan.mcdermott@qub.ac.uk.