What Can We Learn from Northern Ireland’s 25 Years of Peace?

What Can We Learn from Northern Ireland’s 25 Years of Peace?

Wednesday, April 5, 2023

By: Gary Mason;  Melissa Nozell

Next week marks 25 years since Northern Ireland’s Good Friday Agreement ended three decades of violent conflict between Catholics and Protestants. What can we learn from that breakthrough to strengthen peace efforts today? A Northern Irish peacebuilder argues a that a vital step in his homeland’s peace process placed civil society — and, critically, civil society’s religious participants — at its center in a way that other peace efforts (between Israelis and Palestinians, for example) have not. Northern Ireland continues to build reconciliation, a demonstration that, while religious factors sometimes fuel conflict, a fuller engagement of religious leaders and groups contributes powerfully to lasting peace.

Type: Analysis

Peace ProcessesReligion

Music, Poetry, Film: Shoring Up Identities for Peaceful Ends

Music, Poetry, Film: Shoring Up Identities for Peaceful Ends

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

By: Nate Wilson

A Somali master poet reconnects citizens to their government. A Lebanese filmmaker collects fighters' stories to dramatize the cost of war. Police in Northern Ireland adopt symbols of peace to signal a new ethos. In places simmering with long-standing social tensions and alienation, common cultural understandings can help ease hostility, suggesting a potentially powerful role for a mechanism still under-used in peacebuilding: the arts.

Type: Analysis

Conflict Analysis & PreventionViolent ExtremismNonviolent Action

Reconciliation as the Road to Durable Peace

Reconciliation as the Road to Durable Peace

Thursday, September 24, 2015

By: Fred Strasser

Apology. Confession. Truth-telling. Forgiveness. These are elements of reconciliation, perhaps the most important underpinning for turning a violent conflict into durable peace. Yet building peace is complicated by a reality that human cultures have no agreed definition of reconciliation. Indeed many may resist it as an imposed Western value, USIP scholars said.

Type: Analysis

Conflict Analysis & PreventionReligionReconciliation

After Ireland Vote: Various Roads to LGBTI Rights

After Ireland Vote: Various Roads to LGBTI Rights

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

By: USIP Staff

Following Ireland’s constitutional referendum to legalize same-sex marriage, the newly appointed senior U.S. diplomat on human rights for gender minorities said he is “incredibly optimistic” about the prospects for the global campaign to guarantee such protections. Still, U.S. Special Envoy Randy Berry and an international group of activists said May 26 that gender-rights movements in many countries face tougher political landscapes than in Ireland and must rely heavily on more legalistic app...

Type: Analysis

GenderJustice, Security & Rule of LawHuman Rights

A Crucial Link

A Crucial Link

Sunday, September 1, 2013

By: Andries Odendaal

In places as diverse as South Africa, Northern Ireland, and Nepal, negotiators of national peace plans have for years sanctioned the creation of local peace committees (LPCs) to address community-level sources of grievance and thereby to build peace from the bottom up. In A Crucial Link: Local Peace Committees and National Peacebuilding, longtime practitioner Andries Odendaal engages in the first comparative study of LPCs and asks whether and where the committees have succeeded.

Type: Book

Conflict Analysis & Prevention

Northern Ireland: Prospects for Progress in 2006?

Northern Ireland: Prospects for Progress in 2006?

Friday, September 1, 2006

By: Stephen Farry

Northern Ireland's Good Friday Agreement has been held up internationally as a model for successful peacekeeping. However, its flaws, specifically those made in attempt to achieve its full implementation, have contributed to the current difficulties in the peace process.

Type: Special Report

The News Media and Peace Processes: The Middle East and Northern Ireland

The News Media and Peace Processes: The Middle East and Northern Ireland

Monday, January 1, 2001

By: Gadi Wolfsfeld

The news media can play a central role in the promotion of peace. They can emphasize the benefits that peace can bring, they can raise the legitimacy of groups or leaders working for peace, and they can help transform images of the enemy. But the media also can serve as destructive agents in a peace process. They can emphasize the risks and dangers associated with compromise, raise the legitimacy of those opposed to concessions, and reinforce negative stereotypes of the enemy. This report exp...

Type: Peaceworks

Peace Agreements: Northern Ireland

Monday, November 9, 1998

The Northern Ireland Peace Agreement: The Agreement reached in the multi-party negotiations (04-10-1998) Posted by USIP Library on: July 9, 1998 Source Name: Department of the Taoiseach, Irish Government Source URL: www.irlgov.ie/taoiseach/publication/niagreement/annex.htm Date Downloaded: July 2, 1998

Type: Report