This month marks 25 years since the Good Friday Agreement largely ended bloodshed that left 3,600 people dead, some 50,000 wounded and thousands bereaved. Northern Ireland is observing the anniversary with a reunion of key peace process players and a visit from US President Joe Biden.
The peace accord may have stopped the fighting, but deep divisions remain over the conflict’s legacy–making it hard for some of Northern Ireland’s 1.9 million people to move past it. The Good Friday Agreement, struck on April 10, 1998, after almost two years of US-backed talks, committed armed groups to stop fighting, ended direct British rule, and set up a Northern Ireland legislature and government with power shared between unionist and nationalist parties. But the threat of violence has never completely disappeared, and Katy Hayward, professor of political sociology at Queen’s University Belfast, said one goal of the peace agreement has been neglected: reconciliation.
Britain’s departure from the European Union, which left Northern Ireland poised uneasily between the rest of Britain and EU member Ireland, has also upset a delicate political balance, including the power-sharing system set up by the peace accord. Catholics now outnumber Protestants for the first time, and the question of whether in the long run Northern Ireland will remain part of the U.K. or join the south–the issue that fueled the Troubles–remains unresolved.
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