Berkley Center

“So what is like last week?” I asked my cab driver, returning to Belfast after a week of travel. “It must have been crazy with the big anniversary and all.”

“Actually,” he responded, “It was just like any other week,” his nonchalance taking me by surprise. I thought I had missed out on a huge milestone for the city: April 10 had been the twentieth anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. All the key figures from the deal—including George Mitchell, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Gerry Adams, and Lord Trimble—descended on Northern Ireland to commemorate and reflect on the past two decades of relative peace. But to my cab driver, the average Belfast local, things just carried on as usual. 

I can understand his perspective. Even 20 years on, celebrating the “success” of the Good Friday Agreement still feels a little premature. Political stalemate has left Northern Ireland without a functioning regional government for more than a year; the legislative assembly and power-sharing executive both sit empty, despite having been established under the terms of the agreement itself. The two major political parties, the loyalist DUP and the republican Sinn Fein, remain estranged and unable to compromise. In the words of one snarky BBC article, “If you had planned to organise a 20th birthday party for the Good Friday Agreement, you would not do it this way.”

The promises of progress touted by the peace deal remain woefully undelivered. Communities have grown increasingly polarized since 1998, and there still is not a single shared memorial that commemorates victims on both sides of the conflict. A mental health epidemic plagues survivors, with a recent tally finding that more people have committed suicide in Northern Ireland since the Good Friday Agreement than were killed in political violence during the Troubles. Less than 10 percent of children grow up in integrated Protestant/Catholic schools, perpetuating the partition between communities. And despite the economic boost of increased tourism in recent years, an estimated one in four children in Northern Ireland lives in poverty. 

Clearly peace and equity are not as far along as they should be. What has fascinated me as a foreigner in this post-conflict society is how accustomed the Northern Irish have become to living in a state of limbo. As the twentieth anniversary came and went, society carried on as usual—still with no government and no compromise in site. And yet, with all these reasons for cynicism, the community persists in its hopeful outlook for the future. Nonprofit groups have stepped up to fill the void left by politicians. I’ve been to numerous events this semester which have brought together Catholics and Protestants alike to share their experiences and discuss routes forward. It seems that the will of the community supports compromise, but the politicians have yet to catch up. 

Although, I must qualify such a bold statement by saying that if I’ve learned anything in Belfast, it’s that there is no agreed story about what happened and where we are now. As the twentieth anniversary came and went, the unresolved question staring down Northern Ireland is “How do you build a shared future when you still cannot agree on the past?” Some want to draw a line and forget about the conflict all together. Others believe that the older generation that lived through the Troubles needs to die off before society will be able to move forward. And still more want a truth commission to finally lay to rest the wrongdoings of the past. But no easy answer can effectively respond to all that has happened here. I just hope by the time another 20 years have passed, Belfast won’t be talking about a shared future—they’ll have it.