25 years after the Good Friday Agreement is there much to celebrate? 

As the North sinks further into another political vacuum, it’s clear that the work here is not done, writes Emma de Souza

The present political crisis marks the sixth collapse of Stormont’s institutions since their inception in 1998, marking almost 10 years with no devolved government in the North. Picture: Brian Lawless

The North's powersharing institutions are set to be placed in cold storage as Westminster moves to extend the deadline for a fresh election until January 2024. This year commemorates the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, but as the North sinks further into another political vacuum, it is clear that the work here is not done.

The present political crisis marks the sixth collapse of Stormont’s institutions since their inception in 1998, marking almost 10 years with no devolved government in Northern Ireland; This is not a success story. 

During these periods of stagnation, elected political representatives have continued to be paid hefty salaries despite not performing their governing duties or passing vital legislation. In the current cost-of-living crisis, this growing expense on the public purse is being met with increasing public anger. With political parties in situ, civil servants are burdened with decisionmaking responsibilities they were never elected to make.

 The DUP’s undemocratic actions are part of yet another wholly intolerable cycle of self-centred political theatrics where the public and good governance are second to the demands and agenda of a political party that has been gifted the power to pull down the government at its every whim.

Many of the Agreement’s 'yes' voters shuffling into ballot boxes in 1998 did so in hopes that the landmark peace accord would not only bring an end to decades of violence but resolve the underlying political divisions. However, the absence of an implementation strategy nor any external monitoring allowed space for political drift. As this desynchronisation amplified into outright distortion, so too did people’s intransigence towards making the Agreement work.

The 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement gives us an opportunity to take stock, and to face the ugly reality of where we really are a quarter-century-on. Not only does Northern Ireland have no functioning government, but everything from a bill of rights to an anti-poverty strategy, to removing peace walls remains undelivered. The agreement contained many ambitious measures to embed social cohesion and reconciliation under the framework of international human rights' standards, and one by one these measures and commitments have been either misimplemented or discarded entirely. Put simply; the Good Friday Agreement was never fully effected.

The lack of progress is not the fault of any one political party. The Labour Party was in power for over a decade following the agreement, five years of which saw no devolved government and the establishment of the St Andrews Agreement, which further embedded division across the North’s political systems. The Conservative Party added upon these fractures by sacrificing the Agreement on the altar of Brexit. The Irish government has been complacent as well, with all sides playing a role in the mess we are now lumbered with, and it will take an enormous amount of political heavy lifting and stable leadership to break the cycle of failure.

Calls to re-evaluate the way Stormont operates are increasing; People and communities are finding themselves increasingly fatigued and the longer the institutions remain dormant, the more people will lose any lingering faith in politics or the institutions altogether. The Good Friday Agreement is a living document, review is built-in. Periodic reform is not controversial but necessary for progressive societies, and space has to be created for an informed, deliberative debate over how Stormont operates. This is not going away and as a society, we should be capable of considering that what might have been needed in 1998 may not be needed anymore.

The peace process is not simply a Northern affair; Each one of us on the island of Ireland bears a responsibility toward Northern Ireland’s peace process, and it is precisely that: A process. We need to share a collective awakening in order to recognise that not everything promised in 1998 has been delivered, and that now is the time to redouble our efforts.

There will undoubtedly be efforts to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement with celebration this April, but as with its 20th anniversary nearly five years ago, its coincidence during a period with no functioning government makes this an enormously muted event; It is difficult to celebrate something that is demonstrably not working. There is a way forward but it requires acknowledgment that the promise of 1998 was never truly delivered, not just at a government level, but at a societal level North and South.

There are three key things that can be done to advance the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement. First, is a critical analysis of implementation, this includes the seven subsequent agreements that followed the Good Friday Agreement but were also never fully implemented. Part of this examination should be on the continuing necessity of certain measures today, and whether reform would lead to greater delivery on the original aims. For example, the North’s doomed Civic Forum: The concept was to develop a consultative space for civic society that compliments representative democracy, but the process and design of these spaces as well as the growth of deliberative democracy lends to the idea that a new approach may be more relevant than the original structure. Likewise, the exclusion of the Alliance Party representatives from cross- community voting in 1998 may have seemed less outrageous when the party had six seats, but with 17 to-date, it is patently undemocratic.

Second, is to develop of an implementation strategy, followed thirdly, by external third-party external monitoring. There is empirical evidence that peace agreements most often fail at the implementation stage; political resistance, ambiguities in the text (of which there are many), and institutional inertia all coalesce to hinder progress. Effective monitoring in post-conflict societies is crucial to prevent relapse. Without an appropriate implementation strategy and a new ambitious approach, the cycle of instability and division will be repeated time and again.