The unimplemented rights commitments of the peace settlement 23 years on from the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement: A mapping exercise
This new paper from CAJ aims to ‘map’ the status of the principal commitments relating to human rights (including equality) made as part of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement (GFA) and the subsequent agreements that have emerged during the peace process. Many of these rights-based commitments still remain unimplemented.
The paper ‘updates’ the mapping found within ‘Mapping the Rollback: Human Rights Provisions of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement 15 years on’, a report produced in 2013 further to a conference organised by CAJ in collaboration with the Transitional Justice Institute of Ulster University and the Human Rights Centre at Queen’s University Belfast. Additionally, the paper is intended to build upon the Equality Coalition’s 2019 ‘Manifesto for a Rights Based Return to Power Sharing’, which was produced in the context of the January 2017 collapse of the Stormont institutions.
We have published the paper one year on from the signing of the New Decade New Approach (NDNA) deal, which restored power sharing in NI. Since then, progress has been limited – no Programme for Government has been adopted, nor has the Irish language act and broader NDNA language legislation been introduced. There has, however, been some step forwards, such as the recent publication by the Department for Communities (DfC) of expert advisory panel reports to help inform the pending LGBTQI+, gender equality, disability, and anti-poverty strategies.
You can download the full paper via this link.