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TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) - Two decades after the Good Friday Agreement formally ended the conflict in Northern Ireland, the peace process remains fragile and Brexit is provoking concerns over its durability.
TEHRAN, April 09 - The accord, signed on April 10, 1998, by the British and Irish governments and local political parties, ended 30 years of unrest that had left more than 3,500 dead.
It came four years after the Irish Republican Army (IRA), which had waged a deadly campaign of bombings and shootings in Northern Ireland and mainland Britain against London's rule on the island, declared a historic ceasefire.
"I have been a member of the Labour Party for 54 years and a parliamentarian for 32 years and nothing in my life has compared with 5.30 pm on Good Friday, April 10, 1998," Paul Murphy, a British Foreign Office minister for Northern Ireland at the time, told reporters as the anniversary approached.
Since then violence by the IRA and unionist paramilitary groups fighting for continued British rule of the province, has receded.
But communities continue to be divided along sectarian lines and political tensions remain -- most pointedly around devolved governance.
Northern Ireland has been without an executive for 15 months after a power-sharing administration between the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and nationalist party Sinn Fein, in place since 2007, collapsed acrimoniously.
Source: AFP
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