Why it's a negative peace while we remain divided

Northern Ireland has made massive strides towards peace since the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement was signed 15 years ago.

The agreement is viewed globally as a positive model – particularly in the groundbreaking way that it guarantees nationality and identities, regardless of the status of Northern Ireland.

Politicians should be commended that, in spite of their different political aspirations, they have established the power-sharing institutions.

But in spite of this, those of us who study and practise conflict transformation would view the peace here as a negative peace. That is a context where political violence has decreased but the underlying issues that fuel conflict have not been addressed.

One of these issues is societal segregation. The signatories to the 1998 agreement recognised that societal integration was key to reconciliation, noting that "an essential aspect of the reconciliation process is the promotion of a culture of tolerance at every level of society, including initiatives to facilitate and encourage integrated education and mixed housing." But only 7% of children attend integrated schools 15 years on and, in spite of some slight improvements in residential mixing, most people go home to largely single-identity communities.

On the whole, people lead separate social, educational, sporting, recreational and religious lives.

“Union” by Reciprocal of Phi Photography is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Clearly, the commitment in the agreement to integration has not been realised, suggesting that – drawing on the sentiment of the agreement – reconciliation here is incomplete.

However, as the agreement has unfolded, what has become apparent is that what reconciliation means to different parties is not clear.

The original commitment to promoting integration has also waned. Politicians' inability to agree an overarching policy to promote integration is evidence of this.

One of the reasons why this policy has not been agreed is because there is no commonality on the vision of what society we are working towards.

Is the goal one of 'thin' integration or deeper social transformation? Are we going to settle for a society where the dominant communities are going to remain separate and, hopefully, equal, co-existing in negative peace? Or are we seeking more profound change, where all aspects of life are integrated?

Co-existing and sharing society might be an acceptable goal in the short term, given the history of conflict. But is it enough?

The Community Relations Council's peace monitoring report, which was launched last week, observed that the continuing absence of any agreed strategy for flags, parades, or dealing with the past – among others – has left the political establishment vulnerable to the shocks from events. This was obvious in the flag protests.

Although there is an agreement in place, the actual root of the conflict – the constitutional question – has not been settled. This is yet another reason why we need to keep building social integration.

When a settlement comes, whatever it is, a robust social structure needs to be in place where communities are not polarised and living and being schooled in separate groups. Without this, peace will always remain fragile.

Integration and deep cultural and attitudinal change, of course, will not happen overnight. But, given that 15 years have now passed since the signing of the agreement, now is a good time to reaffirm the spirit of integration expressed in it.

This needs to be coupled with politicians robustly clarifying their commitment to working towards integration and showing decisive leadership on how to achieve this.

Settling for division, or limited social sharing, may feel comfortable in the short term, but in the long run it will continue to erode the achievements embodied in the agreement.

Originally published by Brandon Hamber in the Belfast Telegraph, 19 April 2013.

Is the government planning for separate development?

Since the 1998 Agreement and devolution in 2007, there have been three broad opinions on how best to achieve greater integration in the education system in Northern Ireland.

Firstly, there are those who argue for a system of common schools, attended by pupils from all traditions. A second argument is that integration need not be planned, but will happen organically as all schools become more inclusive and open to enrolment from other traditions. However, figures show that almost half of Northern Ireland’s schoolchildren are still being taught in schools where 95% or more of the pupils are of the same religion and fewer than 50 schools have an enrolment of more that 10% from the ‘other community’. A third argument is that separate schooling is inevitable and will continue for the foreseeable future, so another strategy may be to promote ‘shared education’ through more contact and collaboration between schools of different traditions. But if the Northern Ireland Executive plans only for ‘shared education’, does this mean that there will never be any change to the current system of separate schooling?

Read the rest of this article by Alan Smith on the site 15 Years On.

What does peace mean in the South?

Widespread relief greeted the 1998 Good Friday Agreement when over 94% of people in the Republic of Ireland voted to give up the territorial claim to the whole island enshrined in the Constitution until such time as there was a consensus to do otherwise. The desire to end the conflict was strongly endorsed in both jurisdictions, sustained by a dogged and consistent commitment to peace by the then Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern – a fact now buried, for the time being at least, under the debris of the current economic crisis.

The Southern reaction to the Peace Process varied depending on how closely affected by the conflict you were. For those living in the border region, the disappearance of the British Army and the opening of border roads, facilitating ease of movement between towns and villages whose hinterlands and livelihoods had been disrupted by the violence, was greatly welcomed.

Cross-border cooperation in tourism, infrastructure, policing and community development, all boosted by EU Peace funding, has allowed fractured communities to pick up the pieces and start again. For many Protestants in the Southern border counties, there was encouragement to engage in public life again after an ‘eyes down, mouths shut’ policy of trying to survive in a climate of fear and intimidation in a region deeply affected by the violence across the border. Many today continue to live with the residue of that.

The further south or west you travelled, it was hard to believe that the peace process meant anything more than an escape from the nightly violence beamed into living rooms and the interminable discussions about a solution. And of course for others, their interest didn’t extend further north than Sainsbury’s in Newry or Asda in Enniskillen. For a small minority the Agreement was seen as a sell-out.

To read the rest of the article by Barbara Walshe visit 15 Years On.

Human rights and women's rights frozen out

Negotiating a peace agreement in a conflict society provides several challenges. First, you need to create a constructive process; second, you need to ensure that the proposals mean something to everyone at the table and third, you have to ensure that what is agreed gets implemented. It could be argued that the Northern Ireland process was a fairly inclusive one, and the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement was a fairly comprehensive one. But what does the aftermath of the agreement look like?

When George Mitchell told the negotiators on Good Friday in 1998 that ‘the hard work starts now’ he meant that implementing the agreement in the spirit in which it was signed would indeed be hard work. And making it work has been like trying to tattoo a balloon. The perceived gains and losses have to keep pace with each other – otherwise some will accuse others of overplaying their hand. So a peace agreement often hangs on the undertakings it makes. But where there is a clash of interpretations about how these should be fulfilled then a feeling of bad faith can quickly replace the more clear-eyed view of the future, such as the one promised on that Good Friday.

An example of this is the Agreement’s proposal on a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland which, following St Andrews, all the parties were committed to but have taken no decisions on since then.  Building on the largest public participation exercise ever undertaken in Northern Ireland, the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission forwarded its advice to the British government in 2008. However, both the British government and the Northern Ireland Executive appear frozen on what to do next.

To read the rest of the article by Monica McWilliams visit 15 Years On.

Where is our Civic Forum?

Back in the mid-1990s, long before politicians were elected to the Assembly, a broad-based group of people nominated by 10 different political groupings worked long and hard to start the negotiations which eventually led to the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement. Pledges were made that each and every one of its many important provisions would be implemented. And many of them have been.

What we have not seen is the same effort given to the establishment and maintenance of the consultative Civic Forum. The inclusion of a Civic Forum on page 9 of the Belfast Agreement is not a ‘maybe’ or a ‘might’; it is a ‘will’.

This consultative body was designed to be an important ‘sounding board’ between the people and the politicians: the place where strongly held opinions from across our many divides could be aired and shared, and where contentious issues around identity, cultural expression, sectarianism, diversity, social justice, social policy and building of community could be discussed.

It would be a place where people could hear each other’s ‘bottom lines’, particularly on the most contentious issues -- such as policing, parades and flags – in the hope that through such sharing the politicians might learn to take account of those ‘bottom lines’ when formulating policy. It was an effort to inject some consensus politics into a society ridden with divisive identity politics.

To read the rest of this article by Anne Carr, visit 15 Years On.

More steep hills to climb…

The controversies surrounding parading last summer, the murder of David Black and the riots over the Union flag serve as stark reminders that we are not yet a settled place. It is easy to feel despondent and believe we have made little progress when we see violence on our streets again or the angry views of our divided politicians.

Nelson Mandela once said: “I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can only rest for a moment, for with freedom come responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not ended.”

Despite 15 years of climbing great hills since the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement, our ‘long walk is not ended.’ We should, of course, take time to ‘steal a view’ of the progress we have made, and should not take that progress for granted. Hundreds of our citizens are alive today, and thousands are safe from injury and fear, because of that progress.

Read the rest of the article by Peter Sheridan on 15 Years On.

15 Years On...

I am part of a group called 15 Years On. It is a group individuals working in peacebuilding, peace research, cross-border and cross-community organisations who have come together to discuss how we might use 2013 to reflect on the successes and failures of the 15 years since the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement and how we might learn from those experiences to do better in the future. In late 2012 we began a year-long conversation about the progress of peace and cooperation in Northern Ireland, and about where we should go from here. We plan this conversation to take place largely online, leading to a culminating event sometime in autumn 2013. I encourage you to visit the project website, http://15yearson.wordpress.com.