The Good Friday Agreement Fenton

“Failure to abide by previous agreements would fundamentally erode its credibility in international diplomacy – how could a country trust them?” Siobhén Fenton has tweeted his reaction to the news that the UK government intends to violate international law by cancelling the Northern Ireland protocol contained in the Brexit withdrawal agreement. This agreement resulted in a new government that would share power between the Unionists and the nationalists. Siobhan Fenton, a political writer and adviser to Belfast-based Sinn Fein, tweeted about the latest policy news – namely that the Conservative government has admitted it will abdicate the Northern Ireland protocol contained in the Brexit withdrawal agreement. It regrets that the agreement has not put in place structures to deal with the unresolved unrest and the horrors of the disappeared. But LGBT and reproductive rights, for example, were not on the agenda at the time. She notes strongly that “the rights of women and the LGBT community continue to be marginalized, often as a result of decisions taken in Stormont.” The DUP uses the “concern petition” of the agreement on blocking same-sex marriage, which is a mechanism to protect vulnerable and marginalized groups. . it is often a tool of oppression today. Disciplined in the clichés, she omits Arlene Foster`s crocodile. When she recounts the draft debacle of the treaty last February, she nevertheless manages to sum up the unequal treatment of a restored Stormont for the foreseeable future.

When it became clear that an agreement depended on compromise” “party politicians like Arlene Foster were able to digest it, but the base, which had been fed by a regime of violent anti-Irish rhetoric, were not. The DUP was simply too upset to stage a dignified descent. What Fenton explained never happened, because it is “unfortunately not so insolent” … Although their initial response seemed good enough for us. What complicates matters is that it is also a society facing particular and totally unexpected challenges at national and international level, given that the UK voted to leave the European Union in 2016, given that Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK to share a land border with another EU country in the form of the Republic of Ireland. Similarly, stability in the region was further unsettled when the Westminster government struck a pact with a Northern Ireland party in 2017, as the general election failed to allow any of the British parties to grant a majority government. As a result, after getting married, my parents moved to England to start our family, as much as possible by the IRA, by the threat of being tarred and plucked, and by lynchings triggered by English accents. My siblings and I were born in Southampton and lived there until the IRA declared its 1994 ceasefire, after which my parents hoped it would now be safe to return to Northern Ireland.

I was three when we moved out. So I`m part of a generation known in Northern Ireland as “peace babies” or “ceasefire babies” because my peers and I have little recollection of the conflict itself and have generally known it through its shadow. For me, this was a real traumatic incident and I knew more about the peace process in Northern Ireland than about its days of violence. When we returned after the IRA armistice, my family grew up in a small village on a rural area on the outskirts of Belfast, made up mainly of young Catholic couples recently married from West Belfast, who moved there specifically to educate their children about violence and republicism. So my upbringing was essentially Catholic, since almost all of our neighbors, classmates and friends were Catholics.