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The Role of Women in the Northern Ireland Peace Process
20/04/2007 By Vidal Martín
Almost nine years have passed since the Belfast Peace Agreement (also known as the Good Friday Agreement) was signed. Thereafter, Northern Ireland has gone through several ups and downs.
The complexities of the conflict and the high number of parties involved have exacerbated the difficulty of the process. There have been, however, remarkable advances: the Irish Republican Army (IRA) decommissioned its arsenal of weapons in July 2005 and its legal political arm – Sinn Féin – has recently publicly acknowledged British police and judges.
The impact of these two events, however, can lead to a loss of perspective. This
conflict stems from confrontations among several actors: on the one hand, political parties; and on the other hand, paramilitary groups supporting one party or another, the police, the military, and the population. They are all involved in one
way or another, against a backdrop of religious identities and nationalisms.
The relatively recent peace process in Northern Ireland represents an exception to
the European norm. It is the only peace process with clear prospects of stability,
and at the same time, the only long term conflict to which, after numerous
decades, resolution seems possible.
For several decades Northern Irish society has been divided and fractured due to
political motives that have also been wrongly redirected towards a religious battle.
The division is only one: nationalists (catholic in general) on one side, and unionists (protestant in general) on the other.
This, however, does not imply assuming an identity between politics and religion. This is not the case.
Among all social groups, the role of women in conflict in general, and in Northern
Ireland in particular, has been principally marked by oblivion. Women have been
constantly ignored by entire populations, or rather, by their leaders.
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Keywords
Divided societies Europe Human rights International Criminal Justice Ireland Peace process Post conflict United KingdomBio author: Vidal Martín
Vidal Martín runs the "International Criminal Justice and Post-Conflict project" at FRIDE, which is related to Human Rights, Transitional and Universal Justice, as well as the complementarity between national and international courts. He previously worked at the Irish Centre for Human Rights (ICHR), National University of Ireland (Galway).
