Northern Ireland will celebrate the 25th anniversary of peace accords. That largely ended three decades of devastating sectarian conflict in the coming month. Amid mounting political tensions and security concerns.
Good Friday peace Accords
Following marathon talks involving governments in London, Dublin, and Washington. Northern Ireland nationalist and pro-UK unionist leaders struck an unlikely peace agreement on April 10, 1998 – Easter Good Friday.
However, as the province approaches the quarter-century mark of peace. The atmosphere is one of pragmatic reflection rather than celebration.
“The great hopes of ’98 were definitely not met,” Duncan Morrow, professor of politics and conflict resolution at Ulster University in Belfast, told AFP.
“On the other hand, very few people argue that life was better before the agreement than it is now.”
The peace accords’ power-sharing institutions have been paralyzed for more than a year. Due to bitter disagreements over post-Brexit commerce that show no signs of abating.
Following an assassination attempt on a police officer by dissident republicans in February. Northern Ireland’s terror danger rating was raised to “severe” this week.
In the coming weeks, Belfast will host a number of events featuring current and past international heads of state and government to mark the formal end of the conflict that killed 3,500 people.
‘There is always a procedure.’
In March, US President Joe Biden accepted British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s offer to participate in anniversary events.
During his trip, the US president is scheduled to visit both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
From April 17 to 21, Queen’s University Belfast will host a three-day conference hosted by former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Whose husband, former US President Bill Clinton, played a key part in securing the peace deal as US president from 1993 to 2001.
The events will centre on Northern Ireland’s change over the last quarter-century.
Northern Ireland paramilitaries were disarmed, and its militarised border was dismantled. And British forces left in the years following the agreement’s signing.
Brexit complications
The pro-UK Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) has been boycotting Northern Ireland’s devolved government. For over 13 months in protest of post-Brexit trading regulations, effectively crippling the assembly and its executive.
Over the so-called Northern Ireland Protocol, sporadic violence has erupted in unionist areas in the years since the UK’s exit from the European Union.
They are concerned that it will push the province away from the UK and increase the likelihood of a united Ireland, an aim of pro-Irish nationalists.
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who also contributed to the agreement. Stated earlier this month that Brexit was “a difficult circle to square” when it came to Northern Ireland and urged movement towards restoring power-sharing.
The DUP has so far rejected the Windsor Framework. A renegotiation of sections of the protocol by the EU and UK targeted primarily at alleviating unionist concerns.
According to polling conducted for The Belfast Telegraph newspaper in January. A majority of unionists would vote against the Good Friday Agreement in a modern re-run of the 1998 election that ratified the agreement.
Last month’s attempted murder of police officer John Caldwell. Who was shot multiple times as he exited a sports complex with his son, drawing widespread condemnation from Northern Ireland’s political leaders?
However, the Omagh attack, claimed by republican dissidents. It has acted as a stark reminder of the type of violence that was once prevalent throughout the province.
