The role of the IFI and the EU Peace III Fund in creating sustainable peace in Northern Ireland and the border counties

NGOs aided by external economic aid can play a critical part in post-accord peacebuilding situations. This article explores the impact of the International Fund for Ireland and the European Union Peace III Fund in nurturing sustainable peace through development in Northern Ireland and the border counties of the Republic of Ireland by examining the perceptions and experiences of 107 local NGO leaders and 13 funding agency development officers. During the summer of 2010, 120 people were interviewed using semi-structured interviews in Derry city and nine border counties. The article explores the role of external economic international assistance aids in building sustainable development, reconciliation, and peace in Northern Ireland and the border counties.     

Peace processes and Northern Ireland: Squaring circles?

The aim of this article is to review some of the issues involved in the current ‘peace process/talks’ in Northern Ireland. Despite the current euphoria over the talks, Good Friday Agreement and the Nobel Prizes there are still many serious issues to be resolved that leave the whole process in doubt. These are substantive issues that can often appear as trivial detail in the rhetoric and hyperbole of peace. Three issues particularly stand out: decommissioning of weapons, the constitutional status of Northern Ireland and the role of terrorist activists. These, I argue, are key concerns that go to the heart of the Troubles, yet have not been resolved. And it is around these concerns that much of the current talks revolve. They also reflect seriously on the extent to which democratic government can engage in deals with terrorists, trading peace for integrity at what price?     

DEVOLUTION,GOVERNANCE AND THE PEACE PROCESS

Devolution and the associated mechanisms of governance—a power-sharing Executive, elected assembly, cross-border bodies, a reformed system of public administration and civic engagement —are a part of the wider mosaic of peace-building. Their implementation is an attempt to institutionalize stability and copper-fasten a political settlement. This article outlines the changing governmental arrangements existing within Northern Ireland, as it has shifted tentatively away from direct rule. It maps the wider public sector in Northern Ireland, including civil administration (chiefly the Northern Ireland Civil Service), an extended mosaic of nondepartmental public bodies (NDPBs) and other public agencies that, together with local government, form a complex, multi-layered, subregional governance. Our contention is that the manner in which the administration of Northern Ireland has been conducted yields fruitful insights into issues of territorial management in other areas afflicted by intractable constitutional wrangles and attendant violence. In short, an agreed system of governance is integral to the transition from conflict to peace (or at least stability) and, in the case of Northern Ireland, was central to the substance of the Belfast Agreement, characterized by a power-sharing Executive.     

Motivation and Intervention in the Northern Ireland Peace Process: An Interview with President Bill Clinton

The role of former U.S. President William Jefferson Clinton in the Northern Ireland peace process has been acknowledged as an example of political risk‐taking and leadership driven by political interests and strategic post–Cold War aims. The tendency to examine Clinton's role from the perspective of international and global policy objectives, however, has obscured consideration of his motivational role in the Northern Ireland peace process and of how he moved between encouragement and intervention to help the political parties reach a settlement. This article, which is drawn from an extended interview conducted with Clinton in 2017, seeks to paint a more comprehensive picture of Clinton's participation in the peace process, showing how his combination of motivational and interventional skills enabled him to help convince others of the need to take risks for peace and gave him greater influence and leverage over the peace process as a result.     

‘JUST FIGHTING TO SURVIVE’: LOYALIST PARAMILITARY POLITICS AND THE PROGRESSIVE UNIONIST PARTY

Throughout the contemporary period, Unionists and Loyalists in Northern Ireland have reacted in contradictory ways to the peace process. This article highlights some of the key political and social dynamics within loyalism. In particular, it considers the positioning of the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and their linked political representatives in the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP). The response of the PUP to the peace process has revealed several important tensions within unionism. These include the notions that Loyalists can no longer be assured that the UK government will maintain the Union; expressions of class and gendered identities; a lack of trust of mainstream unionism; and, sectarianism, which although it remains a key element within Loyalist identity, is by no means its only dimension. Finally, the article outlines the broader construction of Loyalist and Unionist ideologies, and positions the PUP within broader politics of contemporary unionism.     

Victimisation and Attitudes Towards Former Political Prisoners in Northern Ireland

The release of ex-combatants and the mechanisms for their re-integration within society has become an increasingly controversial issue in peace settlements. Yet to date, the view of victims concerning such arrangements in post-conflict societies remains unexplored. Mindful of this omission and using Northern Ireland as a case study, this article investigates the relationship between victimisation and attitudes towards the treatment of former political prisoners. Based on the 2011 Northern Ireland Social and Political Attitudes Survey, the results suggest that individual victims—those who directly and/or indirectly experienced violent incidents—are notably less supportive of a punitive approach towards the treatment of former political prisoners than non-victims. Moreover, this is particularly the case when victims from within the Catholic community are considered. The Northern Ireland evidence suggests that victims can act as a positive and inclusive force in terms of the rehabilitation and re-integration of former combatants in societies emerging from conflict.     

Trading Refugees for Land and Symbols: The Palestinian Negotiation Strategy in the Oslo Process

This article analyses the negotiation strategy of the PalestineLiberation Organization regarding the refugee issue in the failedIsraeli–Palestinian peace process from 1993 to 2001. Itis argued that the PLO was on the brink of conceding the ‘rightof return’ for the sake of territorial concessions fromIsrael. The author discusses the implications of this strategyfor the domestic legitimacy of the Palestinian leadership, asgiving up the right of return would violate a core tenet inPalestinian national mythology. The PLO negotiators tried tosolve that dilemma by, first, separating the principle of returnfrom its implementation—making it possible for the PLOto remain committed to the principle, while offering compromiseson physical return—and, second, by demanding symbolicgestures from Israel, including acknowledgment of Israel's historicresponsibility for the refugee problem. It is argued that Israel'srefusal to offer a minimum of face-saving gestures preventedthe PLO from formalizing its compromise proposal.     

A Review of: “Stefan Aust. Baader-Meinhof: The Inside Story of the R.A.F. Uwe Steinhoff. On the Ethics of War and Terrorism. Seth G. Jones. Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. Ekaterina Stepanova. Terrorism in Asymmetrical Conflict: Ideological and Structural Aspects. Laura K. Donohue. The Cost of Counterterrorism: Power,Politics and Liberty.”

Approaches to terrorism and peacebuilding have a complex relationship with each other, which may be explained according to four categories outlined in this article. These range from blocking each others’ aims, nullifying terrorism, supporting a very limited, or a broader peace process. Each of these categories has implications for the inclusion and reconciliation of a wide range of actors and the hybrid nature of the emerging peace. This relates to the critical approach of using theory to create emancipatory forms of peace, which is used as a basis for the examination of the production of hybridity via the interaction of approaches to terrorism and peacebuilding in five cases in this article. These include Sri Lanka, Kashmir, the Middle East, Nepal, and Northern Ireland. We argue that “post-liberal” possibilities for a hybrid form of peace (which are inherent in such conflicts) offer a “post-terrorist” potential for peace processes.     

A Review of: “Alfred G. Gerteiny. The Terrorist Conjunction: The United States,the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,and Al-Qa'ida”

Since the advent of the Good Friday peace agreement, violence associated with dissident Irish Republican groups continues to present major security challenges. While there has not been a tragedy on the scale of the 1998 Omagh bombing, the level of violent dissident Republican (VDR) activity has risen steadily in frequency since then, and in 2010 reached unprecedented levels. This article presents findings from the VDR Project at the International Center for the Study of Terrorism at Pennsylvania State University. The research is based on the extensive identification, collection, and analysis of open source material examining the nature and extent of VDR activity from 1997 to 2010. The project analyses data on VDR activity across this period as well as the individuals taking part in these violent events. The data suggests that while originally recruitment was predominantly southern based it is now more focused on Northern Ireland. Analysis of the data also indicates that the VDR leadership continues to recruit individuals with skill-sets to serve the movement's aims.     

Monitoring the Peace?: Northern Ireland's 1975 Ceasefire Incident Centres and the Politicisation of Sinn Féin

During the Provisional IRA's (PIRA) 1975 ceasefire, two different sets of incident centres were established across Northern Ireland in order to monitor and avert escalation of violence between Republicans and Security Forces. While one group of offices was run by the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) and administered by clerks in the Northern Ireland Civil Service, very quickly Sinn Féin (taking advantage of their decriminalisation in 1974) established their own incident centres to coordinate their communication with the government. This article argues that the establishment of the Sinn Féin incident centres set a precedent for the future political activity of the Provisional Republican Movement; that their activity during the 1975 ceasefire played an important formative role in the evolution of the group's political strategy; and that this experience, acquired from the work done during the 1975 truce, was of far greater influence than is appreciated in current accounts.     

The Irish republican army: An assessment of sectarianism

Although the Irish Republican Army (IRA) has been active for more than 25 years, interpretations of the motivation of the IRA are varied. For some, it is a sectarian organization engaged in a tit‐for‐tat campaign with Protestant paramilitaries in Northern Ireland. For others, it is a guerrilla army waging a military campaign against the British presence in Northern Ireland. This article assesses the degree to which the IRA was or was not engaged in sectarian activity between July 1969 and December 1993. Although the Irish Republican Army killed more than 340 Protestant civilians in this time period, this examination suggests that the IRA, in general, was not a sectarian organization.     

In the shadows of war and peace: making sense of violence after peace accords

This article addresses an urgent but largely sidelined issue in the study of peace processes: that high levels of violence—usually framed as ‘crime’—are often ubiquitous in societies experiencing peace processes, even after the signing of peace accords. From South Africa to El Salvador, Guatemala to Northern Ireland, rising interpersonal violence has come to characterise the ‘peace’. This violence often takes place in the context of ambitious post-conflict development efforts. The article argues that even the seemingly non-political violence after peace accords is intimately linked to war, as well as the peace process—in both the causes of violence and in the types of violence that perpetrators use. In order to conceptualise post-peace accord violence, the article presents a framework of violence based on the perpetrators of violence and the types of violence (social, economic or political) that occur. This unpacking of post-peace accord violence emphasises the interconnectedness of political and non-political violence, and stresses the importance of security for development.     

Transitional justice in settled democracies: Northern Ireland and the Basque Country in comparative perspective

This article explores the concept of transitional justice in democratic states dealing with political violence. Although transitional justice was designed for paradigmatic transitions (from war to peace and from dictatorship to democracy), conflicted democracies such as Northern Ireland and the Basque Country could also benefit from this framework which brings a comprehensive human rights approach to the past and promotes the principles of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-repetition. The article compares the transition from conflict in Northern Ireland and the Basque Country. It explores some of the specific features which characterise processes of transitional justice within settled democracies, such as the blurred break with the past, the fragmentation of initiatives aimed at dealing with violence and the mixture of ordinary and transitional justice. As well as contributing to the conceptualisation of the field of transitional justice, the study proposes that the conflict vs. terrorism divide and the clash of narratives associated with it are the key to understanding these types of transitions.     

What can the Basque peace process learn from Southeast Asia?

This article contributes to a bidirectional Asia–Europe comparative analysis of peace processes by exploring what experiences, both failures and successes, can the Basque peace process learn from the many interesting peace initiatives that Southeast Asia has seen in recent years, above all in Mindanao, Aceh, Southern Thailand and Burma. Although there are substantial differences between the Basque conflict and the Asian cases, it might be useful for the Basque case to look beyond the cases with which it traditionally has been compared to, such as Quebec, Northern Ireland or South Africa.     

“The Movement Moves Against you”: Coercive Spoiler Management in the Northern Ireland Peace Process

More than a decade on, the Northern Ireland peace process can largely be considered a success. Despite the failure of the Provisional Republican Movement to achieve a united Ireland free of British control, the large-scale violence of “The Troubles” has been relegated to the past. Applying the logic of coercive diplomacy, this study examines the role of threats and the use of selective and limited violence by the Provisional Movement to manage real and potential opponents and challengers that have emerged within its own ideological ranks to maintain its position of dominance and prevent a spoiling of the peace process. This study shows that the Provisional Movement retained the capability to employ violence and demonstrated the credibility of coercive threat through a willingness to use force against its opponents on the Republican spectrum, and was able to do so with a high degree of impunity.     

Framing the IRA: beyond agenda setting and framing towards a model accounting for audience influence

Coverage of Irish Republican Army (IRA) attacks and the Northern Irish peace process is affected by both the country a media organisation is located and their format. The coverage of the IRA in 1996 was studied in five newspapers based in Ireland, Northern Ireland, the UK and the USA to reveal similarities and differences in language use, stories reported and general emphasis. The frequency of keywords was examined to show that the location a newspaper is based in affects the stories run by the newspaper. However, the format of a newspaper affects the framing of this coverage more than the location. These results were analysed through the lens of two leading theories pertaining to media–public relations: agenda-setting theory and framing theory. While both are shown to be partially useful in explaining the results, a more holistic view that accounts for public influence on media coverage would be even more useful. As a result of this narrow focus on only one part of media–public relations, the two theories do not exhibit predictive power, and further study should be conducted to expand their scope to encompass the public’s affect on media coverage.     

Northern Ireland ‐ a British isles security complex

This article, drawing on the work of Barry Buzan, creates a British Isles security complex. Six patterns of enmity and amity are identified as making up this complex: Northern Ireland Protestants and Catholics; Northern Ireland Protestants and mainland Britain; Northern Ireland Catholics and mainland Britain; Northern Ireland Protestants and the Republic of Ireland; Northern Ireland Catholics and the Republic of Ireland; and mainland Britain and the Republic of Ireland. Applying the notion of a security complex to Anglo‐Irish Agreement not only reveals issues and areas that create or exacerbate conflict, but also that amity in one area of the complex can produce enmity in another area. A security complex approach allows for the systematic analysis of change and demonstrates the multidimensional and interdependent nature of conflict in Northern Ireland.     

The EU's policy towards China and the arms embargo

Since the rise of the “Middle Kingdom” in recent years most European leaders consider this major Asian power as the most important opportunity and challenge in the years to come, not only economically and commercially but also politically and strategically. The EU's China policy is promising, and EU–China ties have been smooth and comprehensive despite bilateral trade and human rights disputes. Concerning Cross Strait relations the domestic political development in Taiwan has a strong impact on the peace and stability in the region because Beijing has never renounced the use of force against the island in case of its formal independence. Given its large bilateral trade deficit, the EU's potential arms exports to China remain significant to the European countries. But this prospect aroused great concern from the US, Russia and Japan. Nonetheless, the Anti-Secession Law from Beijing against Taiwan in mid March 2005 and the likely change of government in the German elections in autumn 2005 on top of the failures of the constitutional referenda in France and the Netherlands in June 2005 will affect the EU decision on the embargo.     

Regionalisation of higher education services in Europe and East Asia and potential for global change

International provision of higher education services in both European and East Asian countries increasingly have a regional dimension. The European Union has since 1987 promoted the mobility of students, faculty, and content through its Erasmus Programmes. The ‘Bologna’ process that began in 1998/1999 now brings over 40 European countries together to create a European Higher Education Area by the end of the current decade. Meanwhile, East Asian countries (10 in ASEAN, plus P.R. China, Japan and South Korea) are also in a process of internationalising their higher education sector with an increasing regional component. Led by Japan, the “ASEAN+3 study group on facilitation and promotion of exchange of people and human resource development” advanced a comprehensive report, welcomed by the East Asian leaders meeting in October 2003, that strives for regional promotion of lifelong learning programs; credit transfer systems; scholarships and exchange programs for students, faculty, staff; research and development cooperation; ‘centres of excellence’ including e-learning; and curricular development as bases for common regional qualification standards among interested institutions. Both regional processes could reinforce each other in various ways, but possibly chiefly through the Asia–Europe Meeting (ASEM) process, unique among various recent inter-regional dialogue and cooperation processes around the world. Moreover, European and East Asian converging higher education processes could help the rest of the world through world inter-regionalism, and through an overhaul of international organisations dealing with higher education. This research was mainly funded by a grant from the Spanish Ministry of Education, Secretary of State for Universities and Research, cofinanced by the European Social Fund. A research fellowship from the Japan Foundation’s Japanese Studies and Intellectual Exchange Department is also kindly acknowledged.

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The challenge of DDR in Northern Uganda: The Lord's Resistance Army

Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels have been fighting in northern Uganda for the past two decades in conflict which has devastated the region. The group is notorious for abducting children and young people. Over 20,000 have been taken since the war began and turned into soldiers and rebel ‘wives’. This is the context of Uganda's informal disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) programme. Rather than being an organised process set up to help consolidate peace at the end of war, it has largely been a necessary response to a flow of escaping former abductees, taking place within an on-going conflict. In 2006, the government of South Sudan began mediating peace talks between the LRA and the Ugandan government. Although the talks have yet to deliver, they have focused attention on managing an end to the conflict, including a formal programme of DDR to deal with those rebels remaining in the bush.

Based on primary research – undertaken in Gulu, Kitgum, Kira and Apac Districts of northern Uganda in August and September 2005 and March 2006 – this paper lays out the problems that have marred earlier attempts to reintegrate former LRA combatants – and looks at the challenges that lie ahead.