The Northern Irish Peace Process

‘The Northern Ireland peace process has transformed a violent conflict into a cold peace.’

Introduction

The Northern Irish peace process describes the period of increasingly public negotiations and ceasefires that took place in the wake of the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985. It culminated in the bilateral Good Friday Agreement (the GFA or Agreement) in 1998, on which successful referenda were held both in Northern Ireland (NI) and the Republic of Ireland (RoI). The Agreement has become synonymous with the subsequent St Andrew’s Agreement 2006 and Hillsborough Agreement 2010 as part of this process.

The Agreement provided a consociationalist framework for power-sharing in NI as a means of political settlement, requiring cross-community support for decisions through various mechanisms to ensure no one party or community was able to dominate the Assembly. While reference to the consociationalist model is necessary, it is not sufficient to capture the Agreement’s complexity. The commitment to an equality culture, a new regime of human rights, reform of both the RUC and the criminal justice system, and an accelerated prisoner release scheme have each contributed to the singularity of the Agreement.

However, almost sixteen years since the referenda on the GFA, the Northern Irish peace process remains incomplete by most interpretations available to the ‘academic crows feeding off the carrion of conflict.’ In fact, often where the peace process is considered to have been completed, it is also considered to have failed. This essay will attempt to reason whether or not it continues on a path of progression toward a completed process, or if regression and inertia have created a backslide away from completion.

Measuring Peace

Before 2010...

... middle of paper ...

...oncessions wrong which has undermined the moderate palayers in the long-game. Most of the populace would agree the triumph of hardliners such as Sinn Fein or the DUP is preferable to the absence of devolution or a return to the ‘Troubles’. However the more sectarian that the parties in power are, the less likely it is that they will tackle the high levels of segregation and economic inequality that continue to blight NI and prevent an end to sectarianism and the completion of the peace process.

This sub-optimal outcome can be traced to a combination of structural weaknesses and the inadequacies of the political class. Structural reforms, linked to a renewal and realignment of politics are therefore needed to rekindle the sense of common purpose which moved the more idealistic supporters of the Agreement in 1998 and which has dissipated in the intervening years.