The origins of ‘civil rights and religious liberties’ in the Belfast–Good Friday Agreement

Abstract

This article traces the origins of the declaration of rights in the human rights and equality section of the 1998 Belfast–Good Friday Agreement, which secured a fragile peace in Northern Ireland. It sets out in detail for the first time the drafting history of the declaration, set against the complex negotiating history of the Agreement as a whole, describing the multiple actors involved in the evolution of the declaration and their motivations, including republican and loyalist paramilitary groups, feminists and civil rights organisations, Irish and British civil servants and political advisors, as well as the political parties. It thus provides a detailed account of the evolution of human rights thinking at a critical stage of the Northern Ireland peace process. The article argues that it is now more important than ever to understand this history. Although originally conceived as merely declaratory, this declaration has, since the European Union–United Kingdom (EU–UK) Withdrawal Agreement following Brexit, taken on a new lease of life due to the Ireland–Northern Ireland Protocol to the EU–UK Withdrawal Agreement, which accorded the declaration of rights a legal status in domestic and international law that it did not have previously. The article concludes with a reflection on the implications of the history recounted in this article for the future interpretation and application of the Protocol (now, the Windsor Framework), and for the study of the historiography of human rights more broadly, emphasising in particular the extent to which the declaration exemplifies a syncretic rather than an eclectic human rights instrument.