Highlights: Northern Ireland celebrates without jubilation this Monday the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. Agreement allowed the British province to end a conflict of almost thirty years and caused the death of 3,600 people. In the years following the peace agreement, paramilitary groups were disarmed, the military border dismantled and British troops left. But a quarter of a century later, this is not the time to celebrate, between political deadlock and security concerns, says Fabrice Mourlon of the Sorbonne-Nouvelle University.

Northern Ireland celebrates without jubilation this Monday the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement which allowed the British province to put an end to a conflict of almost thirty years and caused the death of 3,600...

Analysis

Northern Ireland commemorates 25 years of fragile peace

Britain's MI5 intelligence service on Tuesday raised the level of the terrorist threat in Northern Ireland (illustration image). AP - Peter Morrison

Text by: RFI Follow

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Northern Ireland celebrates without jubilation this Monday the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement that allowed the British province to end a conflict of almost thirty years and caused the death of 3,600 people.

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On April 10, 1998, the Good Friday day before Easter among Christians, Republicans in favor of reunification with Ireland and unionists committed to remaining within the United Kingdom won an unexpected peace agreement after intense negotiations involving London, Dublin and Washington. The agreement thus put an end to three decades of violence that left more than 3,600 dead, between unionists, especially Protestants, and republicans mostly Catholic, with the involvement of the British army.

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In the years following the peace agreement, paramilitary groups were disarmed, the military border dismantled and British troops left. But a quarter of a century later, this is not the time to celebrate, between political deadlock and security concerns.

Political deadlock

For Fabrice Mourlon, specialist in Northern Ireland, professor at the Sorbonne-Nouvelle University in Paris, at the microphone of Romain Lemaresquier, of RFI's International Service, although this agreement is historic, we can not speak of a positive assessment. "There was a whole period from the 2000s until 2016 we will say, when there was the establishment of the new institutions that were in the Good Friday Agreement, where there was a lot of funding from the European Union, there was a whole associative sector that was quite flamboyant, etc., things were starting to fall into place little by little, he lists. At the time, we spoke of a "negative peace", that is to say when there is no more violence sovereignly. So the institutions were being reformed, including the police and the judiciary. There were still problems related to the Irish language. And on top of that, Brexit has obviously accelerated tensions. In fact, since 2016, the institutions have been functioning very badly and especially since the last elections when the DUP [Democratic Unionist Party] refuses to form a government with Sinn Fein.

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The institutions have been paralyzed for more than a year due to disagreements over the consequences of leaving the European Union. The Unionist Party, viscerally attached to the province's membership of the UK, refuses to take part in the government as long as the post-Brexit provisions (customs controls, application of certain European rules, etc.) aimed at avoiding the return of a physical border with Ireland have not been abandoned. A renegotiation of the protocol between the EU and the UK has been rejected by the DUP in recent weeks.

Violence revived by Brexit

If politically the situation does not seem to be advancing, economically Northern Ireland has been able to recover, explains Fabrice Mourlon. "Before the Good Friday Agreement, the Northern Irish economy was really shaky and especially the country was not economically developed at all. Since the agreements, Northern Ireland has changed completely. If you go to Belfast today, you get the impression that it is a British city like any other. At the economic level, it has nevertheless developed. People live pretty much normal lives.

But the violence is still present. "Atthis moment, there is dissension within the paramilitary groups. All had laid down their arms: the IRA laid down its arms in 2005 and the loyalist paramilitaries, around 2010, did much the same. But people still exist and Brexit has revived those tensions a bit.

In this context, Northern Ireland raised its level of the terrorist threat after the attempted murder of a police officer in February claimed by members of a dissident republican group.

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Northern Ireland commemorates 25 years of fragile peace

Northern Ireland commemorates 25 years of fragile peace

Political deadlock

Violence revived by Brexit

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