The agreement reaffirms the commitment to “mutual respect, civil rights and religious freedoms of all members of the community.” The multi-party agreement recognised “the importance of respect, understanding and tolerance with regard to linguistic diversity”, in particular with regard to the Irish language, Ulster Scots and the languages of other ethnic minorities in Northern Ireland, “all of which are part of the cultural richness of the island of Ireland”. The result of these referendums was a large majority in both parts of Ireland in favour of the agreement. In the republic, 56% of voters voted, with 94% of the vote in favour of the constitutional amendment. Turnout in Northern Ireland was 81%, with 71% in favour of the deal. Brooke also tried to get Northern Ireland`s constitutional parties to talk to each other. He suggested that the talks between the parties should cover three parts: the first, which deals with relations within Northern Ireland; the second concerns relations between the two parts of Ireland; and the third, which deals with relations between the British and Irish governments. Talks began in April 1991, but quickly became bogged down in procedural disagreements. But the three-part format should be at the heart of the Good Friday Agreement. In 2010, the signing of the Hillsborough Agreement allowed for the transfer of police and judicial powers to the Northern Ireland Assembly, which began later that year. It also included an agreement on the controversial parades that had led to ongoing conflicts between communities. The IRA renewed its ceasefire on 20 September. This paved the way for Sinn Féin`s participation in the inter-party talks that had begun under Mitchell`s presidency.
However, the issue of dismantling remained and the British and Irish governments tried to get around the problem instead of letting it derail the process again. This led to Ian Paisley`s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) dropping the talks and never returning. The DUP rejected the idea of making concessions on Northern Ireland`s constitutional position or negotiating with Sinn Féin, which it considered terrorist. Although deeply dissatisfied, the more moderate UUP remained in the talks. Given the DUP`s stated desire to break off the talks, Mitchell later wrote in his memoirs that their decision to leave had actually helped reach an agreement. However, this is expected to have a lasting impact on Northern Ireland`s policies, as the DUP`s opposition to the Good Friday Agreement has severely hampered its implementation. Sinn Féin entered the multi-party talks on 15 September 1997 after signing the Mitchell Principles. The Good Friday Agreement (GFA) or Belfast Agreement (Irish: Comhaontú Aoine an Chéasta or Comhaontú Bhéal Feirste; Ulster-Scots: Guid Friday Greeance or Bilfawst Greeance)[1] is a pair of agreements signed on 10 April 1998 that ended most of the violence of the Troubles, a political conflict in Northern Ireland that has followed since the late 1960s. This was an important development in the peace process in Northern Ireland in the 1990s.
Northern Ireland`s current system of devolved government is based on the agreement. The Agreement also created a number of institutions between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland and between the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom. The vague wording of some of the provisions, described as “constructive ambiguity”[8], helped to ensure acceptance of the agreement and postponed debate on some of the most contentious issues. These include paramilitary dismantling, police reform and the standardisation of Northern Ireland. This is because the Good Friday Agreement reached complicated agreements between the different parties. The three strands of the Pact created a network of institutions to govern Northern Ireland (Orientation One), to bring together the leaders of Northern Ireland with those of Ireland (Alignment Two or North-South Cooperation), and to bring together leaders from across Great Britain and Ireland (Orientation Three or East-West Cooperation). There are currently more than 140 areas of cross-border cooperation between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, including health services, energy infrastructure and policing. Many experts and political leaders fear that any disruption to this cooperation will undermine confidence in the agreement and thus the basis for peace in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland`s restored leadership faces difficult challenges in providing basic services and tackling sectarian divisions. One of the most urgent tasks is to improve health services, which fell into crisis after the collapse of local authorities and have been further burdened by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Nurses and other health workers went on strike in December 2019 to protest lower wages than the rest of the UK. Although many health unions have reached agreements with the government on higher wages and other demands in 2020, unions still claim that the system is on an unsustainable path. The agreement establishes a framework for the establishment and number of institutions in three “policy areas”. The agreement reached was that Northern Ireland was and would remain a part of the United Kingdom until a majority of the population of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland wanted something else. If this happens, the UK and Irish governments will have a “binding obligation” to implement this decision. The British Government is virtually out of the equation, and neither the British Parliament nor the British people have the legal right under this agreement to impede the achievement of Irish unity if it had the consent of the peoples of the North and the South. Our nation is and always will be a nation with 32 counties. Antrim and Down are and will remain as much a part of Ireland as any other county in the south. [20] The multi-party agreement is an agreement between the British government, the Irish government and most of the political parties in Northern Ireland. It sets out the support of the signatory parties to the British-Irish Agreement and provides the framework for various political institutions.
It is divided into three parts: these institutional arrangements, which were created between these three strands, are defined in the agreement as “interwoven and interdependent”. In particular, it states that the functioning of the Northern Ireland Assembly and the North/South Council of Ministers is “so closely linked that the success of the other depends” and that participation in the North/South Council of Ministers is “one of the essential responsibilities associated with the relevant posts in [Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland]”. Both views were recognized as legitimate. For the first time, the Irish government has agreed in a binding international agreement that Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom. [9] The Irish Constitution has also been amended to implicitly recognise Northern Ireland as part of the sovereign territory of the United Kingdom,[7] subject to the consent of the majority of the inhabitants of the island`s two jurisdictions to a united Ireland. On the other hand, the wording of the agreement reflects a shift in the legal focus on the UK from one for the Union to one for a united Ireland. [9] The agreement therefore left open the question of future sovereignty over Northern Ireland. [10] The overall result of these problems was to damage trade unionists` confidence in the agreement, which was exploited by the anti-deal DUP, which eventually overtook the pro-deal Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) in the 2003 general election. The UUP had already resigned from power-sharing in 2002 after the Stormontgate scandal, in which three men were accused of gathering information. These charges were eventually dropped in 2005 on the controversial grounds that the persecution was not “in the public interest”.
Immediately afterwards, one of the accused Sinn Féin members, Denis Donaldson, was denounced as a British agent. The landmark agreement, signed by most of Northern Ireland`s political parties, further recognised that the majority of Northern Irish wanted to remain in the UK, although it also recognised that a significant part of the region wanted a united Ireland. These issues – parades, flags and legacy of the past – were negotiated in 2013, chaired by Richard N. Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Meghan L. O`Sullivan, a professor at Harvard Kennedy School and now a member of the CFR board of trustees. The talks, which involved the five main political parties, failed to reach an agreement, although many proposals — including the creation of a historic investigative unit to investigate unresolved deaths during the conflict and a commission to help victims obtain information about the deaths of relatives — were a big part of the Stormont House deal. carried out in 2014. Issues of sovereignty, civil and cultural rights, weapons dismantling, demilitarization, justice and law enforcement were at the heart of the agreement.
In the context of political violence during the unrest, the agreement committed to “exclusively democratic and peaceful means of settling disputes over political issues.” Two aspects were taken into account: the two main political parties in the agreement were the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) under the leadership of David Trimble and the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) under the leadership of John Hume. The two Heads of State and Government jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1998. The other parties involved in reaching a deal were Sinn Féin, the Alliance Party and the Progressive Unionist Party. .
