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March 25, 2002
When the Belfast Agreement was negotiated in April 1998, political parties
found that human rights issues provided a foundation for building a bridge
between the opposing positions. While compromise on the central
question of the constitutional status of Northern Ireland appeared impossible,
underlying fears of domination and discrimination could be addressed by
providing for human rights protections. Human rights standards provide
a basis for separating legitimate negotiating demands (for example, equality)
from illegitimate ones (for example, domination). Because they are universal
and thus transcend the parties in conflict, human rights standards provide
an important touchstone for what is just.
However, not all conflict resolution initiatives use human rights as
a basis for measuring justice. Some people engaged in conflict resolution
regard human rights demands as an obstacle to the establishment of a peaceful
settlement. Human rights activists are criticized for being too focused
on principle; they in turn view conflict resolution practitioners as too
pragmatic.
Lurking just beneath the surface of the “principle” versus
“pragmatism” debate is a more subtle and fundamental division
over the causes of conflict and the best ways to end it. Some believe
that conflict is rooted in interethnic hatred, while others view it is
a consequence of racial domination and discrimination, or a government's
illegitimacy. If one believes that a conflict is about interethnic hatred,
then that leads to one set of solutions; if it is about the denial of
justice and equality, that leads to another.
Groups have been demanding human rights protections since the onset
of the most recent phase of the Northern Ireland conflict in the 1960s.
At first human rights activism centered on the civil rights of the Catholic/Nationalist
community in terms of equal opportunity to obtain jobs, voting, and housing--the
issues at the heart of the conflict's reemergence. But after the state
introduced security measures, a new wave of activism emerged, centering
on issues concerning the rights to a fair trial, use of summary and arbitrary
execution, mistreatment in prisons, abuse in detention, and police harassment
and collusion with paramilitary groups. During the late 1980s local human
rights groups became increasingly sophisticated in using international
forums--including the UN, the Council of Europe, and international nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs) like Amnesty International--to raise human rights
concerns.
The approaches of different human rights groups and the human rights
lobbying of political parties varied. The Committee on the Administration
of Justice (CAJ), established by a group of lawyers to examine the administration
of justice in Northern Ireland, operated with three core principles. First,
it would take no position on the constitutional question, but it asserted
that, regardless of which government was sovereign, rights should be protected.
Second, it insisted that international human rights norms were the applicable
standard for questioning domestic practices; this was an attempt to maintain
a principled basis for intervention and retain objectivity in evaluating
the justice system. Third, it opposed the use of violence to achieve political
ends. In later years the CAJ was criticized, particularly by Unionists,
for failing to monitor and condemn the practices of paramilitary groups
such as the IRA. However, the CAJ's opposition to political violence itself
constituted an outright rejection of such practices, which could have
been compromised by a more nuanced attempt to engage with those practices
without a clear international legal basis or to use the problematically
selective basis of humanitarian law. Other human rights groups, such as
the Pat Finucane Centre, more clearly situated their approach to human
rights abuses within the constitutional context of Ireland’s partition
and cited the state's denial of equality as "the single most important
explanation for the initiation and perpetuation of violent conflict" in
Ireland. In other words, they did not assert their neutrality on the constitutional
issue. All human rights groups agreed that human rights abuses were part
of the problem and therefore had to be part of the solution.
The term “conflict resolution” is a fairly recent one in
Northern Ireland, although work aimed at resolving conflict has always
been ongoing. Academic groups such as the University of Ulster's Centre
for Conflict Studies, and more recently the Institute for Conflict Resolution
and Ethnicity (INCORE), have used the language and literature of conflict
resolution to approach discrete subsidiary conflicts in Northern Ireland
and the conflict as a whole. Some of this analysis accords a place to
human rights. For example, conflict resolution analysis of disputes over
Orange Order (Protestant) marches through Catholic/Nationalist areas has
been informed by analysis of human rights issues in relation to protests
and policing. Some practitioners, most notably those affiliated with Mediation
Network Northern Ireland, also work explicitly in a conflict resolution
paradigm and have used human rights standards to inform their work.
The most heavily funded branch of conflict resolution practiced in Northern
Ireland has been “community relations”--the branch that also
has been most at odds with human rights approaches. Community relations
programs are government-funded initiatives aimed at bringing Catholics
and Protestants together and fostering mutual understanding. During the
period prior to the peace agreement, the community relations industry,
while undoubtedly affecting the lives of some individuals, was singularly
unable to provide any broader structural initiatives aimed at challenging
the conflict and its effects. Moreover, statistics now show that Protestant
and Catholic communities were in fact becoming more segregated in terms
of both housing and social interaction and were also increasingly divergent
in their perceptions of the conflict and state structures.
Even defining community relations proved difficult. Cross-community
initiatives were complemented and sometimes even replaced by single-identity
community development work and cultural traditions initiatives. Single-identity
work involved only one community, but it was justified as community relations
on the theory that only after working on their own community development
would communities have the level of confidence needed to reach out to
others. More problematically, cultural traditions work involved “cherishing”
traditions to foster mutual respect between communities, even when those
traditions themselves instigated division and discrimination against the
other community and often also against women.
Prior to the peace process, community relations proponents operated
at best with a toleration of human rights groups and at worst with an
antipathy toward them as divisive and partisan, obstacles to good community
relations--and therefore peace. Instead of viewing all difficult issues
as political and subject to negotiation, human rights groups suggested
that in some areas there were absolutes that, even if divisive, must be
addressed. Conversely, many working from a human rights perspective viewed
community relations work as perpetuating a status quo in which key causes
of violence were not addressed and conflict could not be meaningfully
resolved. The focus on intercommunal dialogue denied the role of the state
in the conflict; dialogue between Catholics and Protestants, even on issues
of justice and equality, was not an adequate substitute for the government
actually delivering justice and equality.
While dialogue between conflict resolution and human rights practitioners
is valuable, it should not necessarily lead to a uniform approach. During
periods of conflict elsewhere, domestic human rights groups claiming rights
abuses are routinely dismissed, particularly by those they criticize,
as partisan: this was certainly the case in Northern Ireland. If the human
rights NGO is to have influence, it must generate legitimacy both domestically
and–just as important–internationally by a disciplined and
rigorous approach to fact-finding and the application of international
human rights standards. It will be more successful if it separates out
human rights issues from political issues. On the other hand, groups with
a broader conflict resolution mandate can and should engage in a broader
way with a range of political issues.
The case of Northern Ireland suggests, however, that meaningful resolution
of conflict requires strategies that adequately address underlying human
rights issues. Human rights protections are not the whole solution; broad
agreement on political institutions is also necessary to resolve the conflict.
Yet human rights are too often not recognized as part of the solution.
It does not serve lasting peace for human rights protections to be subjected
to barter and exchange.
Response
Mari Fitzduff
The founding documents of the Community Relations Council (CRC) show
that, contrary to what Christine Bell suggests, human rights were an essential
element in the work of conflict resolution/community relations. And any
assessment of the projects funded by the CRC also shows that issues of
rights, justice, equality, and political choice have been and continue
to be essential to the dialogues taking place within CRC projects. Moreover,
all of the Northern Ireland human rights organizations mentioned in Bell’s
article accepted and benefited from CRC funding for their work on human
rights (CRC Annual Reports 1990–2000).
The conflict resolution field does not have problems with human rights
work per se, but rather with the selective and limited way in which some
institutions and individuals have been promoting human rights in Northern
Ireland. The human rights field is seen as having only two major focuses
for its work: to provide a challenge to state abuses of human rights,
and to promote a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland.
When human rights organizations focus solely on state abuses, and exclude
paramilitary abuses, the human rights agenda appears to be supporting
a Nationalist/Protestant (as opposed to a Unionist/Catholic) agenda. Conflict
organization workers admire the necessary and often effective work on
state abuses that has been undertaken by organizations such as the Committee
on the Administration of Justice (CAJ), British-Irish Rights Watch, Liberty,
and Amnesty International. But the fact that these organizations refused
give the same attention to the acts of the paramilitaries who were responsible
for the majority of the 3,700 killed and the 30,000 injured in Northern
Ireland gives the impression that they are against state killings but
neutral on killings by paramilitaries—a very narrow human rights
perspective. In addition, the CAJ had no Unionist spokespersons, which
reinforced the perception that the human rights agenda was a Nationalist
one. Although addressing only state violence has a logic, as Bell explains
in her essay, many in both communities in Northern Ireland have not grasped
it. After all, this logic does not prevail elsewhere: in regions such
as Sri Lanka, Columbia, and Sierra Leone, human rights organizations routinely
document and condemn human rights abuses by both state and nonstate actors.
Under pressure, the CAJ eventually stated in its literature that it
opposed the use of “political” violence, and in the late 1990s
Amnesty International was persuaded to condemn punishment shootings and
beatings. However, much of the damage in ghettoizing human rights had
been done already. This was to affect the establishment of the Northern
Ireland Human Rights Commission (NIHRC) in 1999. Initially, the NIHRC
was seen by many as a Nationalist organization. Now the NIHRC is taking
steps to address the concerns raised by previous human rights approaches:
It is addressing nonstate abuses and has Unionist spokespersons on its
board, which may help convince people in Northern Ireland that its agenda
is indeed necessary for all.
Practitioners of conflict resolution were frustrated by repetition of
the simplistic suggestion that a human rights approach was the only way
to solve the conflict. Many in the human rights field gave the impression
that if you did not agree with their particular way of pursuing human
rights issues, you were against human rights. As a result, many in Northern
Ireland saw human rights workers as generally judgmental, obsessed with
political correctness, and lacking experience in dealing with the complex
and muddy issues that conflict resolution workers often confront.
In many of the situations in which conflict resolution workers are involved,
citing a Bill of Rights is not particularly useful. Whether dealing with
a riot, or trying to stop maiming and murder, or merely trying to get
groups who hate each other to meet for the first time, one needs a very
wide and sensitive repertoire of approaches: referring to people’s
rights in such situations can be about as useful as referring to the Ten
Commandments.
The conflict resolution people’s skepticism about the usefulness
of the Bill of Rights in solving the problems of Northern Ireland has
proved well founded. Most of the remaining controversial issues—contentious
parading (that is, Orange/Unionist marches through previously Protestant
areas that have become Catholic) and the continuing violence at local
community interfaces—have not been amenable to a human rights approach.
Communities have appropriated human rights for their own particular needs,
As one recent independent report has suggested, the result can be two
communities, both of which see themselves as victims and who see their
rights as having primacy over the rights of the other community. Conflict
resolution activists with many years of experience in the field know that
rights and responsibilities merely become weapons for division unless
they are deployed within the context of long-term and sustained dialogue
between communities in conflict.
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