Blog of the John Hume and Tip O'Neill Chair in Peace
The HumeO’Neill Chair with Eliz McArdle from Ulster University and on behalf of the Peace Summit Partnership submitted a response to the Draft Programme for Government for Northern Ireland 2024. The response focused on contemporary peacebuilding issues for young people in Northern Ireland. It can be downloaded here.
The response was launched with the Peace Summit Partnership response at Stormont on 4 November 2024.
In early 2020 the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee (NIAC) launched a new consultation on “Addressing the Legacy of Northern Ireland’s past: The UK Government’s New Proposals”. This consultation specifically focused on the Northern Ireland Secretary of State, Brandon Lewis’, proposal around dealing with the past, i.e. the Ministerial Statement: Addressing Northern Ireland Legacy Issues: Written statement HCWS168 (18 March 2020). The NIAC consultation sought views on this statement.
In response to this consultation, the Chair and Professor Siobhan O’Neill, Professor of Mental Health Sciences, Ulster University, made a submission to the Committee. Our submission (download in full here) argues that the new proposals aim to address some of our concerns about the Stormont House Agreement by reducing the number of institutions that victims and survivors will need to engage with. This minimises the risk that victims will be re-traumatised by having to engage with multiple institutions. However, the new proposals also emphasise the process of gathering information rather than justice. We argue that this will cause significant hurt to many for whom justice was required for meaning-making, and who had awaited justice in order to process the trauma and recover. You can read more here.
