Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement: A Rights-Based Agenda for Advancing the Pillars of a Positive Peace
Abstract:
The 1998 Good Friday Agreement (Agreement) dealt with a number of human rights issues in the region and formed what many see as a constitutional starting point in healing divisions between the two main communities. Widely seen as a model of peace, cooperation, and compromise, the Agreement was the culmination of years of extensive negotiations, which required the intervention of the Irish, UK, and U.S. governments in order to convince the vast majority of regional political parties to make a profound leap of faith.
The Agreement set in place a peace accord founded on the principles of equality and mutual respect, with an onus on the co‐guarantors to protect and enshrine these foundations in domestic policy and practice. A complex combination of legislation, reform, and good will was essential to the creation of newly formed institutions, but success in advancing a rights- based agenda has been far more elusive. Human rights commitments to be protected in legislation included the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), a Bill of Rights, a Single Equality Act, an Irish Language Act, and equality duties to be placed on public authorities.
Of the aforementioned commitments, the ECHR is the only one to be properly implemented, while the remaining human rights protections continue to be poorly effected or ignored entirely. There have been seven subsequent agreements since 1998, each with varying attempts to address the piecemeal progress in advancing human rights—yet not one of these agreements has been fully implemented. Failures remain around citizenship and identity, policing, justice, language, poverty, education, and women’s full and equal political participation. Time and again commitments are made, undelivered, and reworded into a subsequent agreement, only to begin the seemingly unending cycle of rights denial once again. At the center of this failure is political instability with Northern Ireland’s power-sharing institutions operating for just sixty percent of their lifetime.
This essay will examine the gaps in implementing the Good Friday Agreement and human rights protections while making a series of suggested remedies.
Recommended Citation: Emma DeSouza, Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement: A Rights-Based Agenda for Advancing the Pillars of a Positive Peace, 48 Fordham Int'l L.J. 863 (2025).