Queen's University Belfast School of Law

QUB Human Rights Centre Seminar Series

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

Professor Chris McCrudden - Queen's University Belfast - School of Law; University of Michigan Law School; University of California, Berkeley - Berkeley Center on Comparative Equality & Anti-Discrimination Law

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.

Thursday 14 November at 12:30pm in The Edgar Graham Room (MST.02.002)