Peace agreements and human rights by Christine Bell
Oxford University Press 2000
Chapter 6: But what was the question? Evaluating Self-determination
Northern Ireland extract.
B. Northern Ireland
The situation in Northern Ireland throws up the classic minority/territorial integrity conundrum of international self-determination law. While a black-letter international law position would define (Catholic) Nationalists within Northern Ireland as a minority group within a unit commanding territorial integrity, the international community also showed concern over the legitimacy of Northern Ireland given continuing denial of rights and equality to (Catholic) Nationalists. The Belfast Agreement attempts to find a way out of self-determination conundrums, drawing on current trends towards an expanded notion of internal self-determination.i It is of great significance for international lawyers as it both complied with the legal requirements of international law while creatively transcending their paradoxes. Moreover, international law was self-consciously used in this process.
Self-determination is dealt with in the Belfast Agreement ostensibly by using the imprecise language of international law. This is then coupled with institutional mechanisms which move away from absolute notions of statehood, sovereignty and territorial integrity through devices of consociational government, cultural provision, human rights protections, and cross-border connections. First, effective participation of all groups in decision making is guaranteed by a consociational arrangement (with proportionality, power-sharing and mutual vetoes). Second, human rights are guaranteed to all groups equally, regardless of where borders are or how they might change in the future, taking the 'sting' out of whichever Constitutional arrangement might prevail. Third, the entire Agreement is copperfastened through 'regional' mechanisms which reassure competing nationalisms, and potentially offer new ways of thinking about sovereignty and indeed, new ways of 'getting government done.'
These structures, with their many symbolic and practical possibilities, tap into the 'new trends currently emerging in the world community' of greater political and economic integration at the 'supranational' level coupled with growing emphasis on the ethnic and cultural distinctiveness of groups, at the 'intrastate' level.ii Together the combination of supra-state structures and local consociational structures mark a move away from traditional notions of democracy and sovereignty. The Belfast Agreement illustrates how this move can enable self-determination solutions which begin to transcend the sovereignty/territorial integrity versus minority rights divide. Northern Ireland retains its territorial integrity in what Unionists claim is an 'internal' solution, but British sovereignty and the nature of the state is also changed through the cross-border bodies.
The compatibility of Agreement with international law developments was not a coincidental convergence of political pragmatism with international law standards.iii This was not just as a result of the intangible guidance of the parameters set by international law during the conflict. It is clear from analysis of contributing paragraphs, phrases and ideas to the Agreement, that international law formed an important backdrop to negotiations. At key moments parties felt they had to address international law, and on other occasions, it gave parties new ways of relating to the conflict.
For Republicans agreement could only have been reached when their self-determination
claims were addressed. The history of the self-determination paragraph is
beyond the scope of this book, save to say that the formulation as first
accepted by the British Government in the Downing Street Declaration was
vital to reaching the first IRA cease-fire.iv As pointed out in Chapter
Five, John Hume also saw the value of making non-violent method itself a
self-determination issue. This answered the Provisional IRA's national liberation
agenda which drew support from international standards and conflicts elsewhere.
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