Peacing Together Northern Ireland
Here is a link (accessible via the always useful CAIN site) to the text of the Belfast Agreement (also commonly referred to as the Good Friday Agreement). Over 94% voted in favor of the Agreement in the Republic of Ireland, while over 71% voted in favor of it in Northern Ireland (though only 55% of Northern Ireland's unionists voted for it).
Some nine years later, in May 2007, when the historic power-sharing government finally got underway, the Irish writer Colum McCann published a moving editorial in the New York Times. Here's an excerpt:
The victories of peace aren’t as immediate as those of war. It is difficult to imagine the members of the Assembly’s opposing parties shaking hands and agreeing on the colors of the flowers for the Easter parade. It will be a long, rocky road. Parts of the North are still separated by 50-foot-high “peace” walls. More than 90 percent of public housing is segregated, and research has shown that even 3-year-olds still display sectarian instincts. But in the aftermath of so many decades of violence, children are out in East Belfast scrubbing the walls free of political graffiti. Fierce enemies are shaking hands. Prisons, like the infamous H-Block, have been torn down.
There is no greater moment in war than the end of it. The vague dream of getting older, for politicians and terrorists and even children, is that we can somehow still become better people. As much as anything, the move toward devolution is a glimmer of hope for the rest of the world — if it can happen in Northern Ireland, it’s possible that it can happen anywhere. Palestine. Sri Lanka. Iraq.
One of the reasons that center holds is that no one politician, or party, or popular figure is trying to own the peace. It is an international agreement that owes as much to the vision of political leaders as it does to the thousands of mothers and fathers who have brokered it from the inside.
The questions of this generation of children are yet to be shaped. With luck and vision, the “Why?” will be said with a bewildered look backward rather than with a horrified glance about.
For a nation that has shouldered so much for so long, the possibility of no more needless small white coffins is almost answer enough.
Some nine years later, in May 2007, when the historic power-sharing government finally got underway, the Irish writer Colum McCann published a moving editorial in the New York Times. Here's an excerpt:
The victories of peace aren’t as immediate as those of war. It is difficult to imagine the members of the Assembly’s opposing parties shaking hands and agreeing on the colors of the flowers for the Easter parade. It will be a long, rocky road. Parts of the North are still separated by 50-foot-high “peace” walls. More than 90 percent of public housing is segregated, and research has shown that even 3-year-olds still display sectarian instincts. But in the aftermath of so many decades of violence, children are out in East Belfast scrubbing the walls free of political graffiti. Fierce enemies are shaking hands. Prisons, like the infamous H-Block, have been torn down.
There is no greater moment in war than the end of it. The vague dream of getting older, for politicians and terrorists and even children, is that we can somehow still become better people. As much as anything, the move toward devolution is a glimmer of hope for the rest of the world — if it can happen in Northern Ireland, it’s possible that it can happen anywhere. Palestine. Sri Lanka. Iraq.
One of the reasons that center holds is that no one politician, or party, or popular figure is trying to own the peace. It is an international agreement that owes as much to the vision of political leaders as it does to the thousands of mothers and fathers who have brokered it from the inside.
The questions of this generation of children are yet to be shaped. With luck and vision, the “Why?” will be said with a bewildered look backward rather than with a horrified glance about.
For a nation that has shouldered so much for so long, the possibility of no more needless small white coffins is almost answer enough.
posted by Eric at 11:30 PM
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