Last week, John Hume, a prominent political leader in Northern Ireland, died at the age of 83. In 1998, he helped negotiate the Good Friday Accords, which brought peace to Northern Ireland after decades of conflict between Protestants and Catholics, and won a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. His own political experience shows how diplomatic efforts can bring an end to long standing political conflicts and his life should be celebrated for the peace he was able to achieve in his home country.
In one of my own working papers, I describe how peace can be achieved as a result of following four specific rules. First, political leaders need to stop trying to keep all the benefits of governance for themselves. Second, political leaders need to offer fair deals of democracy and self determination. Third, these fair deals need to be backed by military force to ensure their success and fourth, crazy escalators need to be destroyed as quickly as possible.
John Hume basically showed us how the first and second rule can lead to lasting peace, since the Good Friday Accords ended the domination of politics in Northern Ireland by London and set up a democratic power sharing deal that ensured both sides had a stake in the political system. It was only by sharing power between the two factions that the violence came to an end, and demonstrates that this approach to international conflict does have a solid basis in how ongoing conflicts actually can be resolved. If this approach worked in Northern Ireland, then there is hope that this strategy could be adopted more widely in other areas of the world, and ideally would see lasting peace develop in those areas as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment