New order? - Ulster Universitycain.ulst.ac.uk/dd/report9/ddreport9.pdf · the agreement, drawing...

New order?International models of

peace and reconciliation

dialoguedemocratic

2 DEMOCRATIC DIALOGUE NO 9

Democratic DialogueReport No 9May 1998

Democratic Dialogue5 University StreetBelfast BT7 1FYTel: 01232-232230/232228Fax: 01232-232228/233334E-mail: [email protected] site: www.dem-dial.demon.co.uk

c Democratic Dialogue 1998ISBN 1 900281 08 2

Cover design by Dunbar DesignPhotographs by Lesley DoylePrinted by Regency Press

3DEMOCRATIC DIALOGUE NO 9

Contents

Preface 4

Executive summary 5

Introduction 8

Globalism, security and human rights 12

Identity politics and equality 28

Individual and collective rights 40

Diversity and civil society 49

Self-determination and sovereignty 66

NGOs and governments 77

Framing the architecture 89

Placing Northern Ireland 94


Preface

This is the ninth report from Demo-cratic Dialogue, the Belfast-basedthink tank. DD gratefully acknowl-

edges the generous support of its funderfor this project, the EU Special SupportProgramme for Peace and Reconciliationin Northern Ireland, via the CommunityRelations Council.

Further copies are available from theaddress on the inside front cover, price£7.50 (£10 institutions, £4.50 unwaged)plus 10 per cent postage and packing.

DD publishes a number of reports anddiscussion papers per year. Readers maywish to return the enclosed subscriptionslip, to avail of reduced-rate payment forreports, reception of all papers and noti-fication of all DD events.

DD is keen to facilitate debates or dis-cussion groups around any of the themesor ideas raised in this, or indeed other,reports. Again, the contact number is onthe inside cover, where details of our website can also be found. DD


Executive summary

The Belfast agreement is a very com-plex document which many havefound difficult to understand. Many

more have been unsure which ‘side’ has‘won’—who has emerged uppermost outof the pit of three violent decades.

The best way to understand the agree-ment, and to appreciate its political po-tential, is to place it in its internationalcontext. The themes within it—self-determination, territorial claims, humanand minority rights, and so on—are thevery issues which the international com-munity has had to grapple with across awider European canvass since the Ber-lin Wall came down in 1989. And the waythese themes are addressed, far from re-flecting a partisan approach, chimes withthe emergent norms of the new interna-tional order.

This report from Democratic Dialogueis based on an unprecedented three-dayround-table in Belfast, two weeks beforethe agreement, drawing together a welter

of opinion from non- and inter-govern-mental organisations across the conti-nent, exploring the architecture requiredto guarantee security and human rightsin the 1990s.

The debate, based on papers address-ing five difficult themes, went a very longway to mapping that architecture, as rel-evant in Belfast as in Belgrade. But manylessons could be, and were, drawn forNorthern Ireland, as it moves into theuncharted post-agreement territory.

From that discussion, it can be con-cluded that:

• The agreement (pace Sinn Féin) is inline with the principles of self-determi-nation as they affect contested areas,where it is widely accepted that the fu-ture of such areas should be decided by amajority in a plebiscite within them—even though, as a procedure, that is notwithout its problems.

• The quid pro quo in such situations is


that the minority forced to inhabit a statenot of its choosing should be entitled to araft of balancing rights. Such rights arenot (pace Robert McCartney) restrictedto the abstract rights of individuals, asrepresented by the European Conven-tion on Human Rights, but do includethe particular rights of members ofcommunities.

• Hence it is legitimate that the agree-ment promises a specific Northern Ire-land bill of rights which will include notonly the ECHR but also rights concerning‘parity of esteem’. It is significant in thisregard that the UK has just incorporatedthe Council of Europe framework conven-tion on minority rights and the Irish gov-ernment is enjoined by the agreement todo likewise. It is also noteworthy thatthe provisions on the Irish languageare legitimated by reference to thecouncil’s charter on regional and minor-ity languages.

• It is also the case that in areas inhab-ited by more than one community whichrequire to co-exist, there have to be ar-rangements to ensure one communitycan not dominate the other. The weightedmajority/parallel consent provisions arethus in line with, for example, Belgiumwhere 50:50 government operates be-tween Flemings and Walloons ratherthan majority rule.

• It is further accepted that while seces-sion from existing states (and a conse-quent decision to join another state) canindeed take place, that can only be wherethe decision is democratically validatedand there is no question of coercion. Ter-ritorial claims have in that sense beenillegitimate in international law eversince the Helsinki Final Act of 1975. Theproposed reform of articles 2 and 3 woulddefinitively remove the republic’s claimto the north.

• However, if it is true that the inviola-bility of borders to forceful change is rec-ognised, it is also recognised that bordersare nowadays much ‘softer’—more per-meable—than before, as developmentslike European integration have under-mined barriers to free movement and ex-change. The north-south provisions in theagreement are in line with several simi-lar arrangements between EU regions/states, through which competencies heldby regional/national administrations areshared on a basis of mutual accountabil-ity to their assemblies/parliaments.

The Europa discussion also providedmany pointers to the tasks ahead ifNorthern Ireland’s peace is to become

a more profound reconciliation. Notableideas were:

• Even modest practical collaboration can


have beneficial results in building trustand a sense of commitment to joint goalsfrom which all can benefit. This appliesas much to the work of the North-SouthMinisterial Council—even though itsdomains will be initially modest—as tothe Assembly.

• International human rights conven-tions provide a standard against whichcontinuing communal arguments can beassessed. The new Human Rights Com-mission will have an important role inpromoting understanding of rights, andconcomitant responsibilities, in the widersociety.

• Support for cultural creativity is cru-cial to allow new, overlapping and multi-ple identities to emerge and be expressed,rendering unthinking communal identi-fication less compelling. With 12 mem-bers in the Assembly ExecutiveCommittee, a minister of culture shouldcertainly be designated.

• Transcendent symbolism will be neededto ensure that communal symbols do notmonopolise the public domain. Thepower, for example, of a public handshakebetween political leaders across the di-vide should not be underestimated.

• Non-governmental organisations com-mitted to reconciliation are an importantcounterweight to communal polarisation.

The agreement recognises the contribu-tion they have made but resources willhave to follow if this task is to be sus-tained—especially after the ‘peace pack-age’ expires.

• The constructive forces within civil so-ciety need an outlet to engage in a posi-tive dialogue with elected policy-makers.The Civic Forum should be a vibrantvoice for that society, not muzzled by thepoliticians. DD


Robin Wilson

A s the new millennium approaches,the euphoria across Europe whichaccompanied the fall of the Wall in

1989 seems a distant memory. While thewar in ex-Yugoslavia has thankfullyabated, at the time of writing the Kosovotinderbox threatened to ignite anotherBalkan conflict. As the proliferation ofmicro-nationalisms has demonstrated inzones of ethnic and nationalist tension,the message seems mostly to be thesame: such peace as exists is largelypremised on separate, rather thanshared, existence.

This is neither liberal nor democratic,though for the most part it is manage-able. But must such outcomes—completewith their proliferating borders andwalls—represent the summit of civilisedaspiration, at the conclusion of the cen-tury which eventually saw liberal democ-racy enshrined as the ideal form of

Introduction

government for all? Must ‘progress’ nowbe history?

In Northern Ireland, the two main re-ligious communities live more segregatedlives than ever. Yet in the Belfast agree-ment of April this year,1 the subscribingNorthern Ireland parties and the Londonand Dublin governments set very highambitions. For the document boldly en-visages undoing 50 years of one-partyrule at Stormont, three-quarters of a cen-tury of cold war between north and southin Ireland, and an end to the bloc divi-sion which has been a defining feature ofIrish politics ever since the failure of theUnited Irishmen 200 years ago.2

These are grand ideals. Whether interms of political power-sharing in theExecutive Committee of the Assembly,the economic and social work of the pro-posed Civic Forum, all-Ireland co-opera-tion in the North-South Ministerialcouncil, or the aspiration for more inte-grated education and mixed housing, the


agreement can only function if a genu-ine civil society is constructed in North-ern Ireland, situating itself in the widervariable geometry of these islands whichthe accord sketches out.

It will, self-evidently, need all the helpit can get. And, in getting its collectivehead around these daunting challenges,there are two obvious external sourcesto draw upon.

The first is the domain of non-govern-mental organisations (NGOs). Across Eu-rope—indeed they often have atransnational reach—NGOs at best em-body values of liberalism and democracy,unsullied by more Machiavallian consid-erations to which governments are prone,which are indispensable ingredients of acivil society. They also have deep concreteexperience to bring to bear of the strug-gle to maintain such civilities in the faceof centrifugal forces of conflict.

The second is the sphere of inter-gov-ernmental organisations (IGOs): theUnited Nations, the Organisation forSecurity and Co-operation in Europe, theNorth Atlantic Treaty Organisation, theCouncil of Europe and the EuropeanCommission. In the post-cold-war era, theinternational community has had to copein general with much more unpredictablethreats to security, notably with the riseof nationalist claims which can all tooeasily erupt into the horrors of ‘ethnic

cleansing’. In particular, it has had towrestle with how to enshrine the rightsof those minorities trapped by history onthe ‘wrong’ side of borders and neglectedby majoritarian—even, in these terms,democratic—régimes.

Moreover, NGOs and IGOs increasinglyco-operate one with another in these en-deavours.

It was with this rich vein of experi-ence in mind that Democratic Dialoguebrought 35 people from 17 countries—from Yerevan to New York—to theEuropa Hotel in Belfast for three days ofintensive discussion of the shape of anew European order capable of offering

Europe, Europa—many nationalities, many questions


security and human rights to all.3 A crea-tive chemistry was quickly establishedbetween representatives of NGOs and IGOs,and domestic and international experts.4

The round-table not only took placein an appropriately named venue but itopened exactly two weeks before the clo-sure of the negotiations on the NorthernIreland agreement: viewed from the con-ference suite on the top floor of the hotel,Belfast thus provided not just the physi-cal but also the political backdrop to thediscussions. At the time, amidst near-daily mood swings, no one knew whetherwe were facing into a new era or wouldbe condemned once again to live out anold one. But while we now know that ashaft of light has been shone on the fu-ture, the task of reconciliation emergesin even starker relief—and the shadowsof the past remain behind to haunt us.

All who took part in the round-tablespoke glowingly about the insights theyhad gleaned from it. Fundamentally,these were insights into how to resolveethno-nationalist conflicts in liberal-democratic ways, which preserve andstrengthen civil society—insights whichwill be highly relevant as we attempt inthe coming months and years to buildpeace in Northern Ireland.

Acting as note-taker throughout theevent—kindly and ably chaired byQuintin Oliver throughout—my job was

to distil these ideas from the discussions.And many there were, of value both toNGOs and to policy-makers.

In order to ensure that the discussionwas focused and practical—with a mini-mum of airy rhetoric—participation waslimited (13 attended from Northern Ire-land), the event was structured aroundfive challenging themes, and each themewas discussed as far as possible with acase study in mind. While the themeswere cast in general terms, as necessaryfor an international discussion, each ad-dresses one of the key dilemmas that hadhitherto put the Northern Ireland con-flict in the ‘intractable’ category. Theywere:

1) Conflicts may be about both nationalidentities, on which compromise is re-quired, and inequality/oppression, onwhich surely compromise is unaccept-able. Can identity politics and equal-ity be reconciled?

2) Individuals may be at a disadvantageas members of minorities rather than asindividuals, yet installing group rightsmay institutionalise division. Can indi-vidual and collective rights bereconciled?

3) The ‘pull’ of conflicting nationalisms(including, in Northern Ireland, union-ism) has proved much stronger thanother ‘isms’, yet without a common


domain civilised life becomes impossible.Can pluralism and common life bereconciled?

4) ‘Thin’ transnational connections maybe too little for minorities trapped on thewrong side of borders, yet ‘thick’ territo-rial claims may be too much for majori-ties. Can self-determination andsovereignty be reconciled?

5) Issues such as these are often dis-cussed with great sophistication amongstNGOs, yet in formal politics much moreconservative thinking usually prevails.Can ‘small p’ NGOs really shape the‘big p’ political agenda?

Each theme was opened with a paperfrom an expert in the field, and in eachcase a representative of one of the IGOswas asked to begin the discussion.5 Ineach case, the debate moved towardspractical proposals at the end. This pub-lication includes the papers and an ac-count of the suggestions which emerged.

The opening and closing sessions ofthe event sought to draw the five themestogether. The excellent keynote addressby the former senior UN official—origi-nally from Northern Ireland—CedricThornberry and the overall conclusionsfrom the event thus begin and end thisDD report.Footnotes1 The Agreement Reached in the Multi-party

Negotiations, Northern Ireland Office, Belfast,19982 K Theodore Hoppen, Ireland Since 1800: Con-flict and Conformity, Longman, Harlow, 19893 The programme is in appendix 1.4 The participants are listed in appendix 2.5 Cvs for speakers and discussants appear inappendix 3.

DD


Cedric Thornberry

N ine years ago, in a dusty little deserttown, the United Nations began anindependence and peacekeeping

process in a huge, beautiful, sand-blowncountry at the far end of Africa, still atthat time mostly called South West Af-rica but to others known by its modernname, Namibia. For the UN, it was thefinale to 50 years of diplomatic disputewith South Africa; for the people of Na-mibia, the end of a hundred years of vi-cious, sometimes genocidal, alwaysrepressive, colonialism—to which, inlater days, had been added the modernobscenity of apartheid. It was the UN’sfirst return to Africa since the operationsin the Congo in the early 60s which, how-ever successful, had split the organisa-tion, driven it almost into bankruptcy,and claimed the life of its most luminoussecretary-general, Dag Hammarskjold.

We, who had participated in the last

arduous decade of negotiations for thisindependence process, were aware thatwe were witnessing something momen-tous, and that the cold war was driftingto its end. But we could scarcely believethe signals saying that we were about toreap the first harvest of a new interna-tional environment. Within a week wewould be sitting with the old antago-nists—the Soviet Union, the US, Cuba,Angola and South Africa—combining tosalvage the Namibian process from a sud-den heartbreaking emergency that hadengulfed us on the first day.

The working relationship became in-creasingly close as we dismantled theconsequences in southern Africa of thecold war’s rivalries. Mutual confidencegrew, helping South Africa itself to takethe dramatic decision to abandon apart-heid, accept majority rule and rejoin theworld. As Namibia voted, in the Novem-ber of that annus mirabilis, 1989—withvast determination, in resoundingly free

Globalism, security and human rights


and fair elections—7,000 miles away thepeople of Berlin tore down their mon-strous Wall. Within weeks, Mandela wasfreed from Robben Island. Simultane-ously, eastern Europe began methodicallyto smash its chains.

Do you remember the exultancy ofthose days? How humanity itself seemednewly-empowered, with the long-dormant principles of the UN Charter atlast about to be vindicated, and humanrights enthroned, worldwide? It seemeduniversally decreed that we were, indeed,members one of another, and that a NewWorld Order would descend upon us likemanna in the wilderness.

Optimism was especially rife here, inEurope, and seemed to have solid foun-dations. Rapid progress was made to-wards democracy and human rightsprotection across almost the whole con-tinent, backstopped by the maturingEuropean institutions—especially theStrasbourg-based bodies having at theirheart the European Convention on Hu-man Rights—and, strangely, by NATO,which had never been tested. But swordswould be beaten into ploughshares—ifnot immediately, then, for certain, by theend of next week.

What has happened since then? Havethere been long strides towards great-er international cooperation and secur-ity, and more effective systems for the

protection of human rights, both nationaland international?

As the barriers fell in Europe, histo-rians remained sceptical. Eric Hobs-bawm, in his history of the ‘short 20thcentury’, The Age of Extremes,1 recalledthat history showed that many years ofinternational chaos and instability inevi-tably followed the crash of great empiressuch as the former Soviet Union. He con-tended that we were passing through aconfused and structure-less period ofmodern history, at the end of the mostmurderous and genocidal century everrecorded—despite having more co-opera-tive institutions than ever before, and de-spite the progress of human rights. InJuno and the Paycock, Sean O’Casey’sJoxer Daly had, of course, put it more suc-cinctly, rather earlier: “The whole world’sin a powerful state of chassis.”

It is a paradox that, at this time ofincreasing ‘globalisation’ we should alsobe seeing pressures towards regionalism.But cerebral malaria and the ebola virusdo not confine themselves within theboundaries of Africa; nor does the falloutfrom the gyrations of the Hong Kong dol-lar remain in eastern Asia; the hole inthe ozone layer will soon be the hole ineverybody’s ozone layer; intercontinentalmissiles are, by title and definition, norespecters of regional boundaries. Andas our world shrinks in all fields—in


communications, health, the environ-ment, economics, human movement andmigration, military strategy and secu-rity—we find ‘ethnicity’ resurgent. It hasseemed strongest where it has been long-est repressed—whether in former Yugo-slavia or elsewhere in the Balkans, or inthe republics of the former Soviet Union.Even in Britain, the Scots and Welsh areto have their national parliaments.

But what does ‘ethnicity’ mean, forthese purposes? In some instances itmeans little more than ‘regionalism’—which should, of course, not be confusedwith parochialism. ‘Ethnicity’ is, however,often a shorthand for longstanding his-torical, religious and cultural differences.It would have taken a lot sharper eyethan mine to detect—other than bydress—Croats, Moslems and Serbs inBosnia. And one cannot, with any seri-ousness, assert that there are frequentethnic differences between us variegatedCelts currently resident at the northernend of this island, after so many millen-nia of Scots-Irish-Anglo-Saxon-Nordicmiscegenation and mass migration.

I say this with confidence, though aBritish soldier once told me that he couldnot only tell the difference at sight be-tween a Protestant and a Catholic—hecould also distinguish, at two metres,between a Catholic sandwich and a Prot-estant sandwich.

We in Europe, perplexed by recentoutbursts of ‘ethnic’ savagery in ourmidst, should remember that the divi-siveness of exaggerated ethnic conscious-ness, and incitement to hatred of one’sneighbour who has some marginal eth-nic or cultural difference, has been oneof the major concerns of many statesemerging from colonialism during thepast 50 years. The Swedish InternationalPeace Research Institute, which chartsconflicts throughout the world, has foundthat over 90 per cent in the last decadehave been within—not between—states,and that virtually all have had an ethnicfoundation.

Despite this, it has been and remainsone of our civilisation’s defining princi-ples that people of different cultures andbackgrounds should be able to live secureand fulfilled lives within the boundariesof a single state. My luminous and verydistinguished Irish predecessor at the UN,Conor Cruise O’Brien, is one of the ana-lysts who have said that the ‘troubles’ inNorthern Ireland have been based onvast cultural and historical differences,which tend to be unbridgeable, and havecreated two nations. An analogy wouldbe between the peoples of ex-Yugoslavia.

I wonder about this. Having seensomething of the start of the currentphase of the ‘troubles’, have they not, in-stead, been mainly driven and fuelled by


the claim to equal rights, equal humanrights? I merely wonder; I do not contend.(But it would be interesting to see if DrO’Brien’s thesis, that we are two nations,would withstand modern DNA testing ...)

Is one of the reasons for the emphasisnow being given to regional co-operationthat the global environment, with peo-ple and customs so different from ourown, is pressing more and more closelyupon us? Are we feeling an especiallyurgent need to stabilise and solidify ourown locality? Are we looking not only atIsolationist America, but also FortressEurope? Regionalism has both virtuesand weaknesses, and should usually beseen as a building block. The existing in-ternational architecture is both globaland regional. As mentioned earlier, thereare some signs that the global frameworkis being weakened at this time, just a fewyears after such high expectations hadbeen placed in it, and despite the dra-matic pace of globalisation. Let us firstlook at the present condition of theUnited Nations.

I n 1990, hopes were unrealisticallyhigh. Many believed that the UN’s Se-curity Council, after decades of near-

impotence because of confrontation be-tween the superpowers, would at lastfunction as intended by the charter’sdraftsmen—namely, as the instrument of

universal collective security in the world.The success of the UN’s Namibia opera-tion, it was thought, had shown the worldwhat international co-operation couldachieve when the Permanent Members(the ‘P5’) stood squarely behind the sec-retary-general and whatever mandatethe council might have given him.

A very successful UN election supervi-sion in Nicaragua followed, confirming aUN-led engagement of the five centralAmerican presidents in a peace processending a generation of misery and con-flicts—a peace process that, today, re-mains successful. Then came Iraq’sinvasion of Kuwait, which was confrontedby a unanimous international communityand a Security Council that mandated acoalition of the willing, under US leader-ship, to eject the aggressors, by force ifnecessary—leading to the remarkableDesert Storm operation. Desert Stormnot only achieved its goals: it marked, in1991, a unique degree of consensusamong states, and probably the highpoint of UN authority in the post-cold-warera.

While the UN’s Cambodia operation in1992-93—intended to achieve nation-building, democracy and an act of genu-ine national self-determination—wassuccessful up to a point, it had an over-ambitious mandate, having regard to lo-cal conditions and the limited resources


and political support available to it.Other proposed UN operations of thetime, such as the still unfulfilled peaceplan for western Sahara, began to showa dangerous drift away from reality, in-duced by the widespread euphoria. Forthe UN, the years 1992-94 were near-cataclysmic.

In several regions of the world, theending of superpower rivalry and proxywars meant the creation of power vacu-ums, which outsiders were reluctant tofill. Such reluctance stemmed from theconviction that electorates above allwanted the ‘peace dividend’ broughtabout by the end of the cold war; whilesome governments felt that they mustnow concentrate on creating stable, mar-ket-based societies, with an end to for-eign adventures. There were others whobelieved that their peoples wanted themto exercise military strength in variousparts of the world, but only if nobody ontheir side got hurt. Thus, with no one anylonger sitting on the lid of Pandora’s boxto hold it down, conflicts which hadseethed for years spilled out and ignitedin Afghanistan, Angola, Rwanda, Soma-lia, Sudan and Yugoslavia.

Governments began coming to the UN

with grandiose mandates, while, for themost part, impressively refusing to pro-vide the resources required for their im-plementation—it was apparently for the

secretary-general to magic them into ex-istence. Nor, one should add, had the UN

Secretariat, called upon to direct andservice many complex operations, a suf-ficient managerial capacity. For morethan 40 years the secretariat, unablebecause of the cold war to carry out theoften operational tasks foreseen in thecharter, had instead become the world’sexperts at organising and servicing in-ter-governmental meetings, negotiationsand conferences.

During 1992-94, while I was head ofcivil affairs for the UN in its peacekeep-ing operations in the Balkans, we hadabout 50 Security Council resolutionsand presidential statements. Many en-larged our mandate, but few provided theresources necessary to carry it out. Anumber did not even enjoy the agreementof the parties. It was not long before werealised that governments did not knowwhat to do in Yugoslavia; or, if they didknow, did not want to face the probableconsequences in terms of casualties andloss of domestic political popularity.

The depth of frustration among theleaders of UNPROFOR was profound, and itwas little wonder that a Belgian general,in charge of our military operationsaround Sarajevo—after taking constantshrill criticism from governments andthe western press for failing to do whathe had neither the mandate nor the


resources to do—said in his resignationstatement that he no longer even both-ered to read the resolutions of the Secu-rity Council: “They don’t concern me”, hesaid. Such UN dysfunctionalism amongstthe council, the secretariat and the fieldwas also seen in Angola, where the sup-port given to a UN peacekeeping missionwith far-reaching and complex tasks ina huge country racked by a 20-year civilwar was ludicrously inadequate.

Successive secretaries-general were,of course, familiar with the idea that theonly problems that were dumped intothe UN’s lap were the insoluble ones: if asolution was possible there would be in-numerable would-be governmentalpeacemakers. But in the early years ofthis decade some governments wanted touse the UN as the scapegoat for their in-action, rather than as a constructive in-strument of the international community.Events in Somalia, especially in 1993-95,brought further discredit upon the UN,especially in the US, some of whose troopswere killed during an ill-advised Ameri-can punitive action in Mogadishu whichtook place under the nominal authorityof the UN and brought about massive So-mali civilian casualties.

The Canadian general Romeo Dallairerecently gave evidence to the war crimestribunal, sitting at Arusha in Tanzania,concerning the inadequacy of the UN

peacekeeping force in Rwanda at the be-ginning of the genocide there—despitethe warnings that had been sent to thesecretary-general and the Security Coun-cil. It was not elevating testimony, sug-gesting, as it did, that the genocide thatclaimed so many hundreds of thousandsof victims could have been prevented hadthe UN had more presence in the coun-try—and that it did not have more troopsthere because governments were not will-ing, until the massacres were shown ontheir television networks, to make anyserious commitment.

Relations between the UN and the US

have remained delicate, as we again sawwith Kofi Annan’s visit, in the teeth ofthe guns, to Baghdad, and the US hasfailed to meet its financial obligations tothe organisation for several years. In the80s, its default had been led by the ad-ministration; now, it is Congress that de-clines to pay. Debts to the UN stand ataround two billion US dollars—far morethan the UN’s annual budget—and if thesituation is not remedied by the autumnthe US, owing a billion, is liable under thecharter to be deprived of its vote in theGeneral Assembly. It is a wretched situ-ation and all friends of the US and of theUN must hope and work for its early reso-lution, because no one gains from it, andit is becoming a chronic disease.

States—and the Americans are only


the largest, not the only, defaulters—must adjust to the idea that they have tomeet their legal obligations in full andon time. No organisation can long sur-vive what the UN has undergone finan-cially in recent years.

In the 80s, the chiefs of administra-tion of the UN—including the current sec-retary-general, Kofi Annan, then head of

personnel, used to gather for our weeklyFriday meeting with the under-secretary,now the president of Finland, MarttiAhtisaari. The agenda’s first item, almostevery week, was whether there was anyway we could avoid closing the buildingat the end of the afternoon, sending eve-rybody home and turning out the lightsin UN offices and peacekeeping operationsthroughout the world—as we were tech-nically bankrupt and could not even paythe electricity bills, because governmentswere failing to meet their assessed con-tributions. It was only through creativeaccounting, winked at by the auditors,that the organisation survived the 80s.

For all the fine speeches by princesand presidents and premiers, failure tomeet the responsibilities they have them-selves voluntarily incurred corrupts thevery basis of obligation in internationallaw and makes a mockery of the effec-tiveness of the international bodies theyhave created. It is a question of com-mitment, a matter of whether they areserious.

Thus, the UN’s effectiveness is, atpresent, sadly undermined. It would havethe greatest difficulty in mounting anycurrent major action—it is unable evento reimburse troop-contributing nations.Though small missions continue to becreated, they usually consist of a fewmilitary observers, as in the Abkhazia

Key figure, keynote address—Cedric Thornberry speaks to the round-table


region of Georgia. The then very success-ful UN operation of reconciliation betweentwo former adversaries, the Croats andSerbs in eastern Slavonia—the UN Tran-sitional Authority—was wound up inJanuary 1998, far too soon in the eyes ofmost observers; and its work is imper-illed by the Croats forcing out the Serbs,now unrestrained by any substantial in-ternational presence. If the success theUN attained there in a creative process isdestroyed, not only will we see yet an-other wave of ‘ethnic cleansing’—whichconstitutes a crime against humanity—but hundreds of millions of internationaldollars will have been dumped into theDanube.

Again, until the recent increase of ten-sion in Kosovo—which seems to be forc-ing a welcome re-think—another of theUN’s most successful operations, that inMacedonia, was to be withdrawn thissummer, also because even a force of notmuch more than a thousand people is ap-parently too much, now, for the member-ship to support and fund. The mission iscalled UNPREDEP—and it’s the first preven-tive deployment fielded by the UN. Again,experts have been unanimous in warn-ing that the mission’s withdrawal thissummer would carry with it the seriousrisk of upsetting a still delicate situationin south-eastern Europe which the de-ployment of the small force of civilians,

police, and Nordic and US soldiers in 1993stabilised.

The UN has become so emaciated, itscapacities so reduced, that it would beimpossible for it to mount the kind ofoperation, today, that brought about thesuccessful transition from liberation warto independence in Namibia nine yearsago. It is little wonder that major ten-sions have arisen at the UN in New Yorkbetween even its closest friends and theUS. Today, the same fear stalks the corri-dors there as, in its last years, menacedthe League of Nations at the Palais desNations in Geneva—that of the disinte-gration of the organisation.

But the picture is not entirely gloomy:steps are being taken to advance hu-manitarian values under UN aus-

pices. The two ad hoc war crimes tribu-nals, that on former Yugoslavia sittingat The Hague, and that on Rwanda atArusha, are now functioning. The Haguecourt has already disposed of a numberof cases and its prosecutors are workingto bring more indictments. This summer,an agreement is likely to be concludedto establish a permanent internationalcriminal court, though there is not yetconsensus as to how it will becomeseized of cases. Its establishment willmark a huge stride forward, providing in-valuable support for human rights and


international humanitarian law. How Iwish there had been such a jurisdictionwhile we were in ex-Yugoslavia: I believeit would have had a real deterrent effecton the parties if they had known of thereasonable probability that their conduct,illegal under human rights norms andthose of the Geneva Conventions, wouldbring about their personal criminal re-sponsibility, and lead to their punishmentby an independent and objective court.

I remember all too well how variouslocal leaders just sneered when they werereminded—as we often did remindthem—that there were internationallaws protecting civilian populations, for-bidding the barbarities that have beentermed ‘ethnic cleansing’. The Haguecourt still has a long way to go, and hasnot yet universally established itsreputation for independence and non-discrimination in the prosecution proc-ess; there were, in my opinion, errors ofjudgment in some of its early actions. Butit is making progress—the Arusha court,rather more slowly.

The former Irish president MaryRobinson has undertaken extensive re-sponsibilities in her new role as UN highcommissioner for human rights. Onemust acknowledge that the promotionand protection of human rights has beenan orphan child in the UN system, lack-ing financial and political support, and

with grossly inadequate human re-sources attached. Successive secretaries-general of the UN have been a littleapprehensive as to the potential explo-siveness of human rights issues, and gov-ernments have tended to treat the UN’sHuman Rights Commission as a politi-cal tennis-court. Even so, the cause ofhuman rights has made progress in re-cent years and most of the architecturehas been put in place: the treaties are inforce, and mechanisms—which hopefullywill evolve further as confidence grows—exist and are in most cases function-ing. Everyone, of course, is in favour ofhuman rights, as everyone is in favourof motherhood and against sin. There iseven talk today of the transcendence ofhuman rights over the sovereignty ofstates—the French are calling it le droitd’ingérence (the right of interference).

This raises big questions. At least, letus categorically assert that there may beno international intervention without abinding resolution of the Security Coun-cil. Otherwise, the danger of abuse, of aslide back into international anarchy, ofthe hegemony of the mighty few over therest, may engulf the progress made thiscentury—and, pace Hobsbawm, thatprogress has been evident in the spreadof the international rule of law. Comparethe law of today with that of 1914 andyou will see.


Claims of violation of human rightsbrought by one state against anotherhabitually raise the political and diplo-matic temperature—and it is hard to seehow, in the near future, this can beavoided at that level. This is one of thereasons why treaties setting humanrights standards should, if they are to beeffective, enable individuals and organi-sations to initiate implementation andenforcement processes, as in the caseof article 25 of the original EuropeanConvention on Human Rights. As I havealready mentioned, the Strasbourg ma-chinery has been effective in maintain-ing the high reputation of human rightsin our continent, so that when the Wallcame down its standards provided rec-ognised and workable criteria for the newdemocracies.

It is 20 years since I myself last ap-peared as counsel in a case in Strasbourg.However often one does it, it is an expe-rience never to be forgotten—to stand be-fore an international court on behalf of,say, some forgotten and beleaguered pris-oner who’s locked up and the key’s beenthrown away, and open a case allegingbreach of fundamental rights on the partof a sovereign state. In my experience,the importance of the role played by non-governmental organisations in this fieldcannot be overstated; I should like to re-turn to this theme before I finish.

I am not sure that the work of the UN

high commissioner for refugees stands atquite such an auspicious threshold. Asyou know, UNHCR has, in recent years,found itself with an expanded role.Founded nearly 50 years ago, the firsttime it worked alongside and in tandemwith a peacekeeping operation was inNamibia in 1989, when it was charged,under the settlement agreement, withbringing back the diaspora of Namibianrefugees and resettling them in time forthe elections. But in ex-Yugoslavia, andsince, it has tended to become an all-purpose humanitarian organisation,looking after internally-displaced per-sons as well as cross-border refugees. Infact, it undertook the task of providingall kinds of humanitarian relief to vic-tims of conflict sur place, helping themin their home areas so that they wouldnot be driven to become refugees or dis-placed persons.

UNHCR, as an organisation, has under-gone big changes, as a result of this ex-perience. While governmental support forits work as an all-purpose relief agencyhas continued, what is politely called ‘do-nor fatigue’ has also set in, with conse-quent funding problems for particularprogrammes.

UNHCR has found itself having to carryout tasks for which it is not equipped: theproblems which befell Goma camp last


year in Zaire/Congo provide a good ex-ample. This Rwandan refugee camp wasin effect taken over by armed elementswho had been responsible for Rwandanmassacres and who used its facilities,personnel and relief supplies as a basefor attacks into Rwanda. The interna-tional community was unwilling to pro-vide the kind of security support thatUNHCR needed if it was to carry out itsduties and retake control of the camp. Inthe end, it was attacked and its residentsdispersed by Rwandan governmentalforces, with many fatalities among thepurely civilian residents, driven into thebush.

Meanwhile, the protection functionsof the organisation have suffered—in-cluding through governmental distastefor UNHCR’s mandated stand in favour ofrefugees as defined by the 1951 RefugeesConvention. In one way or another, thishas also affected funding—one of themain actors here being Britain, whichhas been reducing its support to an or-ganisation largely dependent on volun-tary contributions, unlike the UN itself.Britain’s contribution has fallen by morethan two-thirds in the last year.

As European NGOs know, the welcomemat in this continent, even for personsgenuinely suffering from persecution,was long ago rolled up and put away.Many ex-Yugoslav refugees are being

repatriated from European countriesagainst their will and against the basicprinciple of refugee law of voluntary re-patriation, and without anywhere to gowhen they are taken back. Other socie-ties, especially in the third world, havebeen more generous.

Instability around its borders is the ra-tionale that has been advanced forNATO’s imminent expansion, to incor-

porate the Czech republic, Hungary andPoland. And 27 other countries in Europehave decided to participate in its Part-nership for Peace programme, activelydeveloped over the last five years—withgrowing interoperability, unity of doc-trine, joint studies and exercises, usuallyin the context of simulated peacekeepingoperations. PfP has been immensely suc-cessful, attracting not only the Asian re-publics of the former Soviet Union andthe countries of eastern Europe, but alsoall Europe’s traditional neutrals: Fin-land, Sweden, Austria, Switzerland—all,that is to say, except the Republic ofIreland.

The Irish army must be eating itsheart out, denied the possibility of work-ing with the rest of Europe, exchangingideas and learning mutual lessons. I haveworked with PfP programmes for severalyears and they have been a great success.Ireland is missed from the company—and


it has a lot to contribute, given its stellarreputation in UN peacekeeping. Perhapsthere could be a small—but significant—contribution here to the peace process, aconfidence-building measure? Even Swit-zerland, which regards UN membershipas incompatible with its neutrality, hadlittle hesitation about joining.

PfP participation is very different fromformal membership of NATO, about whoseexpansion there is still much controversy,though the ratification process is cur-rently taking place in the US Senate. Stra-tegic experts continue to be divided overthe wisdom of enlargement. GeorgeKennan, for instance, the architect in1947 of the policy for the Soviet Union’scontainment, contends that it will provea divisive disaster because it will dam-age relations with Russia and influencefor the worse perceptions there of thewest’s intentions. This is likely to affect,especially, disarmament talks in the SALT

framework. But the enthusiasm in east-ern Europe for membership of NATO, anddesire for the collective guarantee of ar-ticle V of the North Atlantic Charter, isirrepressible. NATO’s enlargement seemsinevitable next year, and Romania,Slovenia and one or more of the Balticstates will surely follow soon after.

Yet this is happening without therehaving been any serious debate as towhat NATO’s purpose is to be, eight years

after the cold war ended. You rememberthe devastating comment of the Sovietgeneral to his NATO counterpart: “We aregoing to do something terrible to you. Weare going to remove your enemy.” In Brus-sels, the US secretary of state, MadeleineAlbright, recently offered the predictionthat NATO would evolve into “a force forpeace from the middle east to central Af-rica”; but European foreign ministersquickly dissented from the idea of a radi-cal expansion of the alliance’s geographi-cal area of responsibility. A new ‘strategicconcept’ for NATO is due to be unveiled nextyear, during its 50th anniversary celebra-tions. But it is strange, even in these con-fused times, to see the cart being placedso firmly, though nonchalantly, in frontof the horse.

Some discussion has begun—mostlyin the States—as to what an enlargedNATO should be doing, and American com-mentators, in particular, have describedalternatives which, while being less di-visive, could provide a similar securityguarantee for Europe. Meanwhile, NATO’smembers are changing the configurationof forces, with the emphasis being placedon more mobile, quick-reacting, joint taskforces, geared for peacekeeping duty. Andthe Western European Union continuesas a potential vehicle for European Un-ion foreign and security policy; the WEU

might run operations that Europeans


decided to undertake but in which northAmericans did not wish directly to par-ticipate—thus creating the parametersfor a European regional peacekeepingstructure.

With the support of numerous PfP

countries, and of others from outside theregion, NATO has also provided the core ofthe post-UN forces in Bosnia—IFOR (theImplementation Force) and SFOR (the Se-curity Force)—working to implement theDayton agreement of 1995 between allthe parties. The military tasks have beensatisfactorily completed but the problemareas were always going to be those re-lating to political and civilian affairs, andhere progress has been much slower.There have also been particular problemsachieving coordination between the mili-tary, in a NATO framework, and the civil-ians, working under a UN umbrella.

The main goals now are to reverse theconsequences of ethnic cleansing, by allsides; to permit the refugees to return totheir homes; to ensure that the new con-stitutional arrangements for Bosnia be-come effective; and to help rebuild thecountry’s infrastructure. There has beena huge investment of political resolve andresources in IFOR and SFOR and it has beenclear for some time that only by SFOR re-maining in place for an indefinite periodcan Dayton be implemented.

I doubt that there will be any similar

international operation in the foreseeablefuture. Apart from anything else, it ishideously expensive, and the UN wouldnever be allowed by member govern-ments to lavish such a fortune on a peace-keeping mission. This is an interestingdistinction; all UN operations are run ona shoestring, to the extent that frugalsupport often substantially affects mis-sion performance—fatally, in cases likethat of Angola in 1992-94.

Since the highpoint of UN peacekeep-ing in 1994, when we had more than70,000 personnel in the field at a cost ofabout $3.5 billion, the emphasis hasshifted from the UN to what chapter VIII

of the UN Charter calls ‘regional arrange-ments’. These had been somewhat ne-glected in the first decades of the UN, butthe last few years have seen their resur-gence. The concept is worthy enough.Article 52 recognises the existence of “re-gional arrangements or agencies for deal-ing with such matters relating to themaintenance of international peace andsecurity as are appropriate for regionalaction, provided that such arrangementsor agencies and their activities are con-sistent with the Purposes and Principlesof the United Nations”. It goes on toencourage member states to use such ar-rangements for peaceful dispute settle-ment, and commits the Security Councilto their use for enforcement action; but


such action can be undertaken only withthe authority of the council. Chapter VIII

has been invoked several times in recentyears—notably in regard to Haiti andLiberia, where regional organisationshave provided peacekeeping forces. Somewestern countries have also been help-ing to build peacekeeping capacities inAfrica, to help with the kinds of problemthat have blown up there in recent years.

About the new emphasis on ‘regional-ism’ let me just say a few words. For manyyears the UN, in composing a peacekeep-ing force for some new trouble spot, au-tomatically ruled out troops from thefollowing groups of countries: the partiesthemselves, the parties’ neighbouringcountries and the five permanent mem-bers of the Security Council. Why? Be-cause experience showed that thesegroups of countries—there might also beothers—were apt to have too much atstake to be able to be, or to seem to be,impartial; and impartiality is the veryessence of peacekeeping. On the otherhand, one must be realistic: often, it ishard to find anyone willing to contributeinfantry or logistics for a particularmission, and sometimes only thosewith much at stake are willing to acceptthe obligation. However, regionalismcannot be allowed to become a mask be-hind which the local bully, prevented byinternational law from subverting the

sovereignty of his weaker neighbours,finds legitimacy for frontal attack. Noris every military action ‘peacekeeping’that calls itself so. Peacekeeping is a prac-tical and well-known concept, forged fromthe experience of more than 40 UN opera-tions in more than 50 years, with clearprinciples compatible with those of inter-national law, which it serves and helpsto support.

H owever confused the post-cold warsituation may be expected to remainfor some years, there is progress in

the development of an international so-ciety, with community values and an in-creasingly effective system of law. Thereis not the slightest basis for euphoria but,for example, I believe we saw somethingvery significant, in the contretemps overthe weapons inspectors in Iraq, leadingto Kofi Annan’s astute visit to Baghdad.Although we are left with just one super-power, with a huge economy and a world-wide reach and grasp, I think we shallnot again see any state or group of statespurporting to act on behalf of the inter-national community without the full andexplicit endorsement of the SecurityCouncil—other, perhaps, than when fac-ing some overwhelming and instantane-ous necessity of self-defence. And this isan important realisation, for centralisingthe use of force is a first step towards


public order—and civilisation. Similarly,as Argentina, Armenia and Iraq have allfound in recent years, attempts to seizeterritory by force are today categoricallyillegal and will not be recognised.

I have tried to survey some areas ofinternational activity wherein we havebeen seeing dynamic development, evensince the start of this decade—in regardto human rights, including the creationof an international criminal court; thedevelopment and legal control of trade;co-operation for international security;and the myriad other transactions, frommeteorology to disarmament, accelerat-ing the process of community-building.In my opinion, however, it is urgentlynecessary to rally around the UN andstrengthen it, so as to guard against anyrecurrence of the activities that have soundermined it in recent years, prevent-ing its healthy development. A reformprogramme for the secretariat has beeninstituted, though as a former directorof administration and managementthere, I am the last person to have illu-sions about the range of early possibili-ties. But the UN is essential to the world.

The day when the sovereign state wasthe sole actor on the internationalstage—apart from a motley crew of pi-rates, war criminals, blockade-runnersand the East India Company—is longgone, and I have argued for many years,

especially in the field of human rights,that NGOs have a vital role to play. Yourorganisations are varied in size andstrength and preoccupations and outlook.Often, you can go where governmentscannot; you can focus precisely and en-gender attention. You can encourage,goad, study, warn, assist, and you will beheard, because access to the means ofpublicity as well as the levers of power isusually part of your lifeblood.

The success of some recent humani-tarian campaigns, such as that againstanti-personnel mines, is an object-lessonin working effectively at an internationallevel. In our modern style of representa-tive democracy, the popular will needs toexpress itself through not just one butvarious channels. Much of what I havesketched has stemmed from the activi-ties of persistent and resolute NGOs.

I hope that all of the organisationsrepresented here will continue to refuseto take ‘no’ for an answer.

DiscussionDiscussion of Mr Thornberry’s addressstarted from the suggestion that therewere two ways to view the late 90s: wasthe glass half-empty (as Eric Hobsbawmappeared to believe) or half-full, as thespeaker implied?

The NATO representative, HaraldBungarten, took a sceptical view:


politicians wished soldiers would do morewithout giving them the mandate to doso, he said. Every decade the numberof conflicts increased, despite talk ofthe ‘end of history’. The glass was only‘quarter-full’.

This led to an exploration of why eth-nic and nationalist conflicts were an in-creasingly evident feature of theEuropean and worldwide landscape. Itwas suggested that globalisation was aprocess lacking legitimacy because noteveryone could participate equally in it;ethnic élites were able to garner supportfrom the excluded. Globalisation alsodestroyed old certainties; ethnocentrismallowed these to be reinstated in an im-aginary way.

The middle-east conflict, it was ar-gued, had been prefigurative of many oftoday’s ethnic tensions—including in thefailure of the international community toresolve it. One of the virtues of warcrimes tribunals, as that in the Hagueon ex-Yugoslavia, was that they provideda vehicle through which citizens couldmake a connection with the internationalcommunity.

As regards the role of NGOs, MrThornberry admitted that governmentsweren’t always as sympathetic to work-ing with them as were intergovernmen-tal organisations. The UN and NGOs tendedto have similar roles in mind, such as

protection of human rights: “I’m not al-ways sure that that can be said of somegovernments some of the time.” But gov-ernments were not monolithic and oftencontained some who shared the aspira-tions of NGOs, as against other individu-als or departments to which they wereopposed.

Footnotes1 Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: TheShort Twentieth Century 1914-1991, MichaelJoseph, London, 1994

DD


Tony Gallagher

O ne of the most memorable bookswritten on Northern Ireland set theconflict within a wider comparative

context. The book was written by FrankWright, a colleague in the Politics Depart-ment in Queen’s University who, sadly,died prematurely.1 A lecture series hasbeen established in his memory and inthe first lecture of the series, AdrianGuelke also set the Northern Irelandsituation in a comparative context.2

Adrian’s context was provided by thepeace processes then under way in SouthAfrica, the middle east and Northern Ire-land. In each case, Adrian identified a keyturning point when a hitherto stable situ-ation appeared amenable to change.

In South Africa, the turning pointcame with the 1976 uprising of schoolstudents in Soweto and the killing ofHector Peterson by South African secu-rity forces. Following these events, many

young people fled South Africa to enterthe camps of Umkhonto we Sizwe (themilitary wing of the ANC), while withinSouth Africa a new internal oppositionmovement started to form.

In the middle east, it was an accidentin the Gaza strip when an Israeli truckcrashed into a car of Palestinian labour-ers, killing four and injuring the others.This was to light a spark that led to theintifada.

And Adrian pointed also to a key turn-ing point in Northern Ireland. This eventoccurred in October 1968, when a civilrights march in Derry was banned by theUnionist government and attacked by thepolice in full view of television cameras.Given the violence Northern Ireland hasexperienced since, the events then seemextraordinarily restrained in hindsight.But at the time they had an enormousimpact on perceptions and perhapsmarked the point at which the old way ofdoing things became unsustainable.

Identity politics and equality


In many respects it was perhaps ap-propriate that the turning point in North-ern Ireland occurred in Derry. Thepolitical arrangements in the city weregenerally cited as the most blatant ex-ample of Unionist domination. A systemof gerrymandered electoral wards en-sured that Unionist politicians held amajority on the council, even though theunionist electorate comprised a minorityof the city’s population. It is not surpris-ing that, to nationalists, the city wasknown as the ‘capital of discrimination’.

But the city had a key historical sig-nificance for unionists also: in 1689 theProtestant inhabitants of the old city heldfast against the army of Catholic KingJames, in support of William of Orange.There is a continuing tradition wherebya Protestant society, the Apprentice Boys,march around the walls of the old city incommemoration of the siege. In 1969Catholic opposition to the march led towidespread rioting in the city, the virtualcollapse of the police force and the intro-duction of British troops to restore order.Subsequently, the city was to become astrong centre for the IRA and, indeed,parts of it virtually ceded for a time fromNorthern Ireland.

A visitor to the city would now find avery different picture. Much of the cen-tre has been redeveloped and rebuilt. Thecity council is now unambiguously under

the control of nationalist politicians and,indeed, the most significant political con-test is between the moderate nationalistparty, the SDLP, and the more radicalSinn Féin. The city appears wealthier,more settled and politically less fraught,certainly in comparison with Belfast.Despite its position as a crucible of vio-lence in the early years of the conflict,the city was spared much of the worst ofthe sectarian violence, as the variousparamilitary groups appeared to operatea modus vivendi which eschewed randomassassinations.

But in some respects an importantpart of the heart of the city has gone.The River Foyle divides the city in halfbut its significance has become as much

Tony Gallagher (centre) keeps his notetaker (his left) very busy


religious as geographic. There has beena steady and continuing fall in the Prot-estant population of the western part ofthe city. Only one small and decliningarea within the old city walls remains.There are a number of ‘Protestant’schools on the western side, but somehave become de facto Catholic, while oth-ers have a questionable future of anykind. In a very real sense, Protestantsappear to have given up on that part ofthe city, feeling that they now count fornothing.

It is as if the carefully crafted domi-nation of the old Unionist régime hasbeen replaced by a casual, almost care-less domination by nationalist politi-cians. The old system was wrong and hadto be changed, because it represented theillegitimate domination of a majority bya minority. But in the changing, have wecreated a situation where a majority nowdominates a minority, to the extent thatthe minority feels driven out? If so, thereis still no accommodation, no reconcilia-tion with difference, no celebration ofdiversity.

Let me examine another example.From the origins of the Northern Irelandstate there have been separate schoolsystems for Protestants and Catholics.The state system of schools was officiallynon-denominational, but in ethos andpractice it expressed the interests and

values of the Protestant majority inNorthern Ireland. The Catholic schoolsystem provided the most significant so-cial institution of that community, in asociety where systematic discriminationin employment set barriers to the labour-market participation of Catholics. Al-though some attempt was made todevelop a genuinely non-denominationalschool system in the 1920s—efforts whichwere opposed by Catholic and Protestantchurches alike—it was not until the late60s that a rapprochement was agreedbetween the Catholic authorities and theNorthern Ireland Ministry of Education.

The funding arrangements for Catho-lic schools followed practice in England.Thus, Catholic schools received publicfunds to cover a proportion of their capi-tal costs. The difference represented thecost to the Catholic community of theirright to own and operate their own schoolsystem. This type of arrangement is com-mon in Europe and the principle was, infact, confirmed in a case before the Eu-ropean Court of Human Rights. The courtruled that if a particular interest, suchas a denominational authority, wanted torun its own schools then it should beentitled to some public funds if it canmeet reasonable viability criteria. Thecourt also ruled that it was reasonableto ask that particular interest to con-tribute towards the cost of the school in


recognition of its ownership and control. In Northern Ireland two extra ele-

ments were added to the equation. First,there was a persistent pattern in whichleavers from Catholic schools had, onaverage, lower qualifications thanleavers from Protestant schools. Sec-ondly, there were labour-market differ-ences between Protestants and Catholics,to the disadvantage of Catholics, and thegovernment was committed to the prin-ciple of fair employment. While discrimi-nation contributed to the pattern oflabour-market difference, an investiga-tion by the Standing Advisory Commis-sion on Human Rights in the 1980ssuggested that the differential perform-ance of the two schools systems was alsoa factor.

I was one of a group of academicsasked by SACHR to investigate some of thereasons for this differential in attainmentlevels. Our study suggested, among otherthings, that the different funding ar-rangements for Catholic schools had op-erated to their disadvantage and hadprobably contributed to the attainmentdifference. In an abstract sense it wasreasonable to ask the Catholic commu-nity to make a financial contributionfor their schools. However, in the widercontext of government objectives, particu-larly the priority attached to fair employ-ment, we concluded that Catholic schools

should be funded at the same level asProtestant schools. After some public dis-cussion the government agreed.

On one level, this could be seen as apositive example of a mature pluralism.If we accept the right of minority com-munities to organise their own schoolsystems—which seems to be consistentwith international human rights stand-ards—and to receive public funds for this,the decision to fund Catholic schools inNorthern Ireland to the same level asstate schools provided a demonstrationof the government’s commitment toequality.

The decision and the research werecriticised on a number of grounds. Oneof the criticisms was that the decisionhelped to entrench segregated schools.Some critics suggested that we shouldhave recommended developments in re-ligiously integrated schools. It is a mootpoint whether a recommendation bySACHR for more integrated schools wouldhave led to any additional increase inthese schools. In any case, and as notedabove, the standards of the internationalcommunity recognise and endorse theright of minorities to their own schoolsand, in so doing, differentiate betweenseparate schools by choice and segregatedschools by requirement.

But my main interest here is some-what different. Now that all schools in


Northern Ireland are funded to a similarlevel, has this led to an increase in co-operation between the school systems?This co-operation could include attemptsto ensure that the separate schools do notunintentionally promote social division.It could include proactive attempts topromote tolerance, reconciliation andfairness through the schools. In addition,the authorities of the school systemscould recognise that allowing for separateschools introduces an additional cost tothe system as a whole, and agree to col-laborative initiatives designed to makethe schools system more efficient.

One way in which this might occur isfor the transfer of property between thesectors in appropriate circumstances.This practical co-operation would avoidthe bizarre situation that sometimes oc-curs where a school of one type closes asa school of another type is built anew ona nearby site.

There is a degree of co-operation be-tween the school authorities, but argu-ably the opportunity for creativeinitiatives has not been seized. And wehave seen the situation where zero-sumarguments are used by the authorities ofProtestant and Catholic schools againstthe development of religiously integratedschools. In other words, the school sys-tem illustrates some of the possibilitiesof pluralism. But it also illustrates the

limited way in which such opportunitiesare pursued: in practice, sectional inter-ests are often prioritised.

In both the examples I have outlinedwe can see a dilemma. In both cases,changes were made in pursuit of the

goal of equality. But it could be arguedthat in neither case did this change leadto greater tolerance and reconciliation.Indeed some might argue that the mainresult was to reinforce separation.

This dilemma is not unique to North-ern Ireland. No one could fail to be movedstill by the words of Martin Luther Kingin 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial: “I havea dream that my four little children willone day live in a nation where they willnot be judged by the colour of their skin,but the content of their character.”

This evocation was for all citizens ofthe United States, black and white, toenjoy the rights of citizenship. It repre-sented a claim for the application of lib-eral principles: treat each person as anindividual, not as the exemplar of a type.However, the pursuit of equality in theUS moved more and more away fromtreating people as individuals, and moretowards measures which may have hadthe effect of reinforcing group identities.

Affirmative action, goals and targets,workforce monitoring, availability andutilisation analysis—these all depend on


ethnic counting in order to identify aproblem, define a solution and judge anoutcome. One does not have to be an ad-vocate of neo-liberal economics to recog-nise the way affirmative action measuresin the US became increasingly prescrip-tive in terms of outcome, at least untilthe political balance of the SupremeCourt shifted to the right and the condi-tion of ‘strict scrutiny’ made it harder toapply and easier to avoid any affirmativeaction measure. Similarly, one does nothave to support the conservative criticsof multiculturalism in US schools never-theless to recognise the soft target pre-sented to those critics by some aspects ofthe Afrocentric movement.

And this dilemma is faced also inNorthern Ireland. To work towards fairemployment, we need to know how manyProtestants and Catholics are inworkplaces. With this information we canidentify the areas where priority actionis needed and monitor progress towardsfair participation. But this also means wehave to allocate people to mutually ex-clusive categories. In so doing, we run therisk of reifying those categories and as-cribing to them an essentialist character.

The minimalist approach advocatedby neo-liberals does not provide a solu-tion. When the state limits its role sim-ply to attempting to remove barriers toparticipation, without any meaningful

diagnosis of the reasons for those barri-ers, little significant change follows. How-ever, as I have suggested above, thestatist approach which advocates activedirection of outcomes as part of an equal-ity agenda may serve to reinforce the so-cial divisions that gave rise to inequalityin the first place. The context of divisionmay change, but the fact of division mayremain stubbornly intact.

Of course there are factors particularto Northern Ireland which contribute tothis pessimistic scenario. Despite havingthe trappings of a democratic state be-tween 1921 and 1972, it never really func-tioned as a democratic polity. Thegovernment always won the elections,because confessional politics maderesults highly predictable—indeed sopredictable that during many electionsa high proportion of the seats wereuncontested.

Confessional politics is rooted in his-tory in Northern Ireland. Indeed, somemight say that politics here is too stronglyinformed by absurdly long memories andabsurdly short imaginations. If politicsin Northern Ireland operates as a zero-sum game, then it should be no surprisethat political discourse displays the samecharacter. And perhaps it should also notbe a surprise if the pursuit of equalitytakes on this zero-sum character.

But of course Northern Ireland is not


alone in having politicians with absurdlylong memories. Benedict Anderson re-minded us that the ‘imagined community’of the nation rests on history as its foun-dation. Five years ago an article appearedin the Observer newspaper highlightingan example: the article reported how aGreek sculptor had found himself in theeye of a storm over his work.

The hapless artist had been commis-sioned to produce a statue of Alexanderthe Great to stand in Florina, a town onthe frontier with the former Yugoslavrepublic of Macedonia. The statue wasclearly intended to send a symbolic warn-ing to the ‘usurpers’ across the border, butthe town councillors were outraged withthe result. Instead of endowing the 2,000-year-old warrior king with “the muscleshe deserved”, the statue cast him “look-ing like a puny pacifist”. How, they com-plained, could the artist of this “obscenemodernist work”, have “forgotten thegreat man’s weapons and helmet? Orhave the gall to show him riding his horsewith bare feet?”

Of course the Macedonians find them-selves caught in a peculiarly Balkan di-lemma. The Serbs accept the existenceof a distinct Macedonian ethnic identity,but would prefer there to be no separatestate. The Bulgarians are comfortablewith a separate state, but believe theMacedonians are really Bulgarians.

While the Greeks seek to deny the exist-ence of both state and identity.

In this century, the continuing legacyof Versailles highlights the endurance ofmemory. The overt point of the settlementwas to bring closer the ethnic and geo-graphic division of Europe. Czechoslova-kia made a case to be an exception to thisrule, on the grounds that it would becomethe ‘Switzerland of central Europe’. In theevent, the fear of giving too much au-tonomy to the Sudeten Germans con-strained the degree of autonomy given tothe Slovaks, thus providing the seed-bedfor Slovak ethnic politicians 70 yearslater.

In those parts of the map where eth-nicity and statehood did not coincide, thepresumed hope was for assimilation andthe amelioration of separate identities.In fact, it is in the interstices of the set-tlement where we can see the enduringpotential for ethnic conflict or, as inNorthern Ireland, its continuation.

Moving to other examples, Lebanonwas to be the ‘Switzerland of the middleeast’. This produced a settlement sotightly dependent on ethnic headcountsthat, once put in place, everyone wasafraid to check whether the comparativecounts changed over time—though eve-ryone knew they had. In Switzerland it-self, the highly decentralised cantonalsystem is perhaps less a celebration of


diversity than an attempt to sustain amultitude of linguistically, and perhapsreligiously, homogeneous subunits—all ofthis leavened with a less than fully posi-tive approach to a numerically significantpopulation of non-citizen ‘guest workers’.In Spain, is regional autonomy a way toachieve the promise of diversity, or is it,more prosaically, an attempt to attenu-ate separatist pressure and hold the statetogether? Federalism in Belgium seemsto have led to virtual separation.

Anderson’s notion of the imaginedcommunity highlights the way in whichnational identity is constructed and le-gitimated on the basis of historicalmemory, but is then reinforced by therelationship between the nation and ‘its’territory. The nation-state is predicatedon the idea that each (homogeneous) na-tion has the right to its territory, basedon the right to self-determination. Eventhough the discourse of the nation-stateimplies permanence in the internationalorder, the reality is that territorial ar-rangements do change, albeit only underextraordinary conditions. In Europe, ter-ritorial change occurred only after thetwo world wars and the cold war. Andeven in Ireland change came about inorder to pursue still further the link be-tween territorial and national specificity.

But, as Anderson also reminds us, theidea of the homogeneous nation and ‘its’

territory is based on a socially con-structed one, albeit an intensely power-ful myth. Indeed, it is precisely becauseit is based on myth that the dilemma forthose of us who wish to pursue equalityarises. At the heart of the discourse ofthe nation-state is the idea of a homoge-neous community. But the reality is oneof heterogeneity in actually-existing so-cieties. And it is because of pluralism insociety that we face the problem of somegroups being treated less fairly than oth-ers. This raises the need for action to pro-mote equality, but this can lead to ethniccounting, potentially reinforcing theclaim of essentialist identities. In North-ern Ireland this goes further to cast allsuch measures within the overarchingpolitical discourse of territorialism, andmay contribute to an ever deepening di-vision in the society.

I s there a way out of the dilemma? Oneway out may be to learn from the ex-perience of civil society. Particularly

among new social movements, the natureof political engagement may be more mul-tidimensional, transient and develop-mental. If so, this may prefigure adifferent discourse of politics that avoidsimmutable positions across an extensiverange of issues. The priority attached tothe achievement of specific objectivesmay also contribute towards a discourse


of politics that privileges accommodationin the pursuit of attainable positions.

One of the ironies of Northern Irelandis the coexistence of a vibrant and dy-namic civil society alongside a fairly stul-tified public political domain. Withintraditional liberal discourse civil and po-litical society are distinct and separatedomains; within traditional Marxist dis-course civil society is a sham, an emptyvessel for disguising the ‘real’ basis ofpolitical power. But perhaps there arebenefits to be gained from recognisingtheir separate existence while strength-ening the influence of one on the other?

Another possible way out, perhaps notunconnected, is the development of newLabour’s ‘third way’ between statism andthe market. This third way recognises thelimits of relying on the ‘hidden hand’ ofthe market, while avoiding the ‘heavyhand’ of state-led direction of outcomes.The approach is one which tries to pro-mote social inclusion by establishing‘enabling processes’ which offer peoplechoices over their future, and systems ofinstitutional accountability. However, theapproach also asks people to take respon-sibility for the choices they make.

It is this combination of enabling proc-esses, accountability and responsibilitythat seems to lie at the heart of many ofthe new policy directions being chartedby the government, and certainly seems

to underlie its proposals for equality inNorthern Ireland. In the best of all pos-sible worlds this provides a strong basisfor promoting equality, while avoiding theessentialist problems arising from thedirection of outcomes. But the test is yetto come.

Two of the key elements of this dis-cussion have centred on the claim tosocial homogeneity as against the expe-rience of social heterogeneity. The di-lemma arises from measures designed tocope with the clash of these notions. Asynthesis might involve an active at-tempt to legitimise and value hybridity.In Northern Ireland this implies movingfrom a situation where our political dis-courses cast us as either British or Irish,to a new understanding where we seeourselves as both British and Irish simul-taneously, and recognise in any case thatthe idea of being British or Irish not onlychanges over time, but exists in variousforms at any single point in time.

The difficulty, however, is that whilethe idea of hybridity may be intellectu-ally satisfying, this is little evidence yetof its emotional potency.

DiscussionJeannie Peterson from the UN opened thediscussion by introducing how parallel,concrete challenges had been addressedin ex-Yugoslavia—in particular, in the


contested part of Croatia known as east-ern Slavonia for which she had been re-sponsible.

The onset of the war in ex-Yugoslaviahad been marked by the departure ofCroatia from the federation, she said.This had left the Serbs in Croatia, for-merly a majority in ex-Yugoslavia, a mi-nority in the newly independent state.War had followed, later spilling over intoBosnia where most international atten-tion had subsequently focused.

Efforts by the international commu-nity to promote dialogue between theSerbs in Croatia and the Croatian au-thorities had failed. The Serbs hadattempted to form a separate adminis-tration, rejecting even quite radical plansfor autonomy within Croatia. Croatianassaults had led to a Serbian exoduswhich left only one enclave behind, ineastern Slavonia. As a result of theDayton agreement on ex-Yugoslavia, theUnited Nations Transitional Authorityfor Eastern Slavonia (UNTAES) had beenformed, backed by 5,000 troops, to pro-mote reconciliation between Serbs andCroats there.

A range of UNTAES committees hadbeen established to address aspects ofharmonisation between the communities,from electricity to education. Employ-ment had been very contentious, in termsof guaranteeing Serbs a fair share of jobs.

To avail themselves of such rights, theSerbs had had to accept de facto that theywere citizens of Croatia: they had beenvery reluctant to give up on the idea of aseparate state. But in the end most hadtaken part in elections for county, city andmunicipal authorities, where the repre-sentatives of both communities had hadto come to terms with the practical chal-lenges of local government everywhere.

‘Technical’ issues—such as ensuringa common postal system—had been rela-tively easy to resolve. Those with a strong‘emotional’ dimension—such as educa-tion—had proved much more difficult.

The Croats had celebrated whenUNTAES left, whereas the Serbs had hopedit would remain for decades. The UN hadsince been forced publicly to criticiseCroatia over its implementation of theagreements. Ms Peterson concluded,however, that while multiculturalismwould take years to develop in easternSlavonia the basis for it had been laid.

Returning to Northern Ireland, MariFitzduff said that in the past those con-cerned with intercommunal equality hadtended to scorn those promoting inter-communal contact. Yet interdependencewas indispensable, and she welcomed theproposal in the government’s white pa-per on equality3 that all public bodiesshould be obliged not only to promoteequality of opportunity but also good


relations between groups.Was national identity really necessary

in the modern world? it was asked. MrGallagher replied that while it was easyto debunk nationalist accounts of the pastthese still had tremendous motivatingpower. In the post-modern world bothglobal and local identities were resur-gent. “The trick is to persuade people thatthey are not just one thing: they can bemore than one thing at the same time.”

Tony Kennedy of Co-operation Northconnected this to the rights of diverseindividuals within communities to thatdiversity: “You’re always forced to bein one identity or another.” He relatedthe story of a devoted supporter of Co-operation North who tragically died onthe annual maracycle; he had combinedtwo loyalties—one to the maracycle, oneto the Orange Order.

Joyce McMillan told of how she hadbeen challenged by a supporter of theScottish National Party at a funeral asto her identity. She had replied that shewas Scottish and British, to which he hadresponded ‘You’ve got a problem’. ‘No,you’ve got a problem’, she had told him.She suggested that in the cultural spherehybridity, far from being disdained, wascelebrated and could have a compellingpower.

Harald Bungarten spoke of how aGerman could have a hierarchy of three

identities: (say) Bavarian, German andEurope. The point was also made thatidentity is contingent—on holiday, being‘Irish’ can be a common and non-threatening ascription, for example.Similarly, ‘Czech’ and ‘Slovak’ had notseemed to be so incompatible before par-tition was set in train. It was important,therefore, to think through taken-for-granted identities: as Mr Gallagher putit, the goal was to inject ‘niggling doubt’.

It was further suggested that conflictswere easier to resolve if a wider range ofinterests could be brought to bear, includ-ing via NGOs. This might be particularlyhelpful as such groups might focuson other identities—such as labour orbusiness.

But cultural hybridity was a bridgetoo far for members of communities whofelt themselves to be under threat andso felt the need to assert their sense ofdifference, as uncomplicatedly as possi-ble, as a weapon in their defence. Therewas thus a need to be clear as to wherethe common ground of interdepen-dence lay, so that it was not seen as sur-reptitious dominance by one group overanother.

To put it another way, for those whoperceived themselves to be socially ex-cluded, other sources of identity—profes-sional, regional, familial—might fallaway, as a single identity offered itself


as the only vehicle for expressing resist-ance to that exclusion. Hence, forexample, the otherwise inexplicable phe-nomenon of alienated young east Ger-mans now defining themselves as‘belonging’ to the ex-DDR.

In resolving conflicts with both theaxes of inequality and difference, a finebalance was entailed: interdependencehad to offer security to the traditionallydominant group, without ruling outchange for the historically subordinateone. Domestic constitutions and interna-tional human rights conventions couldboth be brought to bear to provide clearrules.

If equality was about content, inter-dependence was about process. Thuswhile at Queen’s University the rightdecision had been taken on the removalof the British national anthem from thegraduation ceremony, given its offensive-ness to nationalists, the right process hadnot accompanied it. An intense debatehad taken place, yet almost entirely con-fined to people talking to people from thesame community, disposed to give thesame response. Common ground had notemerged.

Symbolism was key and tolerance wasthus crucial. Germany, because of its his-tory, could tolerate the flying of variousflags internally by the different Länder.Other countries, because of their histo-

ries, could not.What was the role of the international

community? If cultural homogeneity wasbeing thrown into question, so too had tobe problematised the associated idea ofmonolithic states immune to ‘externalinterference’. Hence the droit d’ingér-ence idea, on behalf of subordinatedminorities.

Combining these considerations,Bernard Dréano suggested, if symbolswere crucial to multiculturalism—andFrance of course had had the long expe-rience of the area of Alsace-Lorrainecontested with Germany—then ‘interna-tional symbolic mediation’ was requiredin Northern Ireland, recognising its Brit-ish, Irish and European dimensions.

But Ms Peterson’s testimony—ofwhich perhaps the Northern Ireland‘peace package’ partnerships are anotherexample—was also a telling demonstra-tion of the importance of building uponpractical efforts on the ground.

Footnotes1 Frank Wright, Northern Ireland: A Compara-tive Analysis, Gill & Macmillan, Dublin, 19872 Adrian Guelke, Promoting Peace in DeeplyDivided Societies, occasional paper no 6, Queen’sUniversity Dept of Politics, Belfast, 19943 Partnership for Equality, Cm 3890, 1998

DD


George Schöpflin

W e live in a world of multiple iden-tities and we regard the ideal po-litical system as the one that

permits them widest expression. Reality

is different, of course. Political systemsdo indeed allow some identities expres-sion, but others are constrained orrepressed.

In understanding the nature of theseprocesses, we have to look at the criteriaby which communities sustain them-selves and seek to establish the coher-ence that makes a community acommunity and not just a group of dis-parate individuals. Individuals withouta community are dispossessed, but thecommunity to which they belong imposesduties and assigns them rights, as wellas empowering them with ways of decod-ing the world.

In this context, it is essential to un-derstand which identities have politicalweight attached to them and which donot. In broad historical terms, we areliving in an era when cultural identitiesare becoming more important and eco-nomic ones less so, at any rate as far asEurope is concerned. Until the collapse

Individual and collective rights

A matter of interpretation


of communism, both the west and thecommunist world stressed theuniversalism of economic identities.Marxism-Leninism did so explicitly;western liberalism began from the as-sumption that individual choice was themainspring of identity and saw thischoice as primarily, though not exclu-sively, articulated in economics.

The collapse of communism placed aquestion-mark over this emphasis on eco-nomic identities. The contest for influ-ence, authority and power that we callthe cold war turned, inter alia, on thesimilarity between eastern and westernassumptions about the nature of thedeepest interests of the individual andhow these economic identities should befed into politics. Once communism ended,the west’s own assumptions were leftwithout an antagonist that thought in thesame way. It had to face relatively noveldemands for access to power on the basisof cultural identities that were deviantby economic criteria.

All identities function in much thesame way. They seek to establish theirvalidity, have them accepted by commu-nities organised around other self-definitions, make their existence ascommunities unchallenged and unchal-lengeable and secure themselves in thecontext of political power. The order thatcommunities establish operates, crudely

speaking, at both the institutional andthe symbolic level. Power and authorityare expressed and sustained by institu-tions, procedures and other forms of ex-plicit regulation.

At the same time, communities alsorely on their symbols, rituals and ceremo-nies to ensure their survival. Every com-munity does this. Memory and forms ofknowledge are vested in the symbolic di-mension of politics and create a sense ofsolidarity, without which it is difficult tosustain consent to be ruled. This is theessence of cultural reproduction. Allcommunities seek to ensure their sur-vival—that is, they engage in culturalreproduction.

It follows that a stable political sys-tem will make provision for both the in-stitutional and the symbolic aspects ofpower. If one is neglected, the other willsuffer and that generally produces nega-tive reactions on the part of those af-fected. For ‘negative reactions’ readfriction, conflict, dissension. All politicsinvolves conflict, but when the contest forpower is taking place at the symbolicrather than the institutional level, it isinfinitely more difficult to regulate it—above all because symbols appeal to theemotions, to the affective dimension ofcollective existence.

This helps to explain why institu-tional provision on its own will not solve


identity-driven conflicts. The finest, mostelegant legal system in the world will beuseless in such situations and relianceon a legal discourse is a waste of timeunless the prior non-legal assent to beruled is already there.

In most European political systems,provision for symbolic representationexists, but it tends to be unequal for dif-ferent groups and that is the principalsource of much ethnic conflict. The weak-ness or absence of access to symbolicpower leaves identity groups uneasyabout their cultural reproduction andthey will seek to secure it. This makesthe contest for power opaque and unpre-dictable, and raises fears about commu-nal survival which institutional power isincapable of regulating.

The problem is acute or even hyper-acute in multi-ethnic states because ourpolitical traditions privilege institutionalregulation over the symbolic. Indeed, wetend to be dismissive of symbolic politics.We tend to dismiss it as primitive, or pre-political or just plain irrational. This isan error. If one’s aim is to achieve stabil-ity, then adequate provision for symbolicrepresentation is just as vital as the ac-cess to institutions which democratictheory stresses so strongly.

It follows from the foregoing that suchtwofold provision, both institutional andsymbolic, is bound to be more difficult in

multi-ethnic states than in mono-ethnicones (under mono-ethnic I include stateswhere one ethnic group makes up over90 percent of the population). Where twoor more ethnic groups coexist, access toinstitutions and symbols will requirecomplex and continuous negotiation toensure that no community becomes fear-ful for its survival and, crucially, that thesymbolic demands of one community donot endanger those of another. This lastproposition can be argued both on pru-dential grounds and on the basis of demo-cratic self-limitation.

However, it is important to note thatcitizenship on its own will not producethe kind of democratic, inter-ethnic sta-bility under discussion. The codes of citi-zenship establish the framework for theinstitutional relationship between the in-dividual and the state and the clarity thatthese codes offer is vital for uninter-rupted cultural reproduction. Arbitraryuse of power not only makes for bad gov-ernance but generates fear.

It should be understood, though, thatcitizenship and its regulation are invari-ably coloured by the ethnic assumptionsof the group that contributes most to it.It is this colouring that has to be mademulti-coloured if all the ethnic groups inthe state are to gain the security underdiscussion here. In this sense, citizenshipis a necessary condition of democratic


stability in a multi-ethnic state, but it isnot sufficient.

What follows from the discussion sofar is that collectivities create sources ofpower and the members of groups seekrecognition for their demands for power.If the political system can absorb thisproposition, then the extent of collectivepolitical rights can be seen as a matterof negotiation. Legal rights are down-stream of that and it is misleading tobegin from legal regulation. Legally de-fined rights will only gain full respectwhere the collectivities in which peoplelive have a sense of their secure future.

The individual’s position, therefore, ismore dependent on the collective than weare accustomed to think. Since the En-lightenment, western assumptions haveturned on the proposition that the indi-vidual is the pivotal, autonomous agentin society. This is persuasive, but thatautonomy is not absolute. It is boundedby the implicit and explicit baggage ofassumptions that all individuals bringwith them and these assumptions arederived, as often as not, from culturalimperatives.

We are all members of communitiesand communities create their own regu-lation. Indeed, we are deeply suspiciousof individuals who have no community,who are in that respect not ‘recognisable’.Hence individual rights are established

and exercised in and against the commu-nity in which the individual lives.

In certain circumstances, therefore,individual rights can be thoroughly con-strained by the demands of the commu-nity. This delimiting of the individualtakes place when the collectivity feels it-self under threat and imposes the sever-est restrictions on freedom. Here, thefield is wide open to manipulation, be-cause when groups perceive their exist-ence as being in danger, they will appealto the affective dimension and therebyexclude or restrict rational argument.

S o much for the theoretical analysisof the relationship between collectiveand individual rights. Applying these

insights to the ruins of former Yugosla-via, we can draw various conclusions.

It is evident that multi-ethnic commu-nist states were inherently weaker thanmono-ethnic ones. Hence, communismhad little or nothing to offer in advanc-ing the skills needed for multi-ethnic ac-commodation, because it relied on forceand the threat of force to maintain itself.The system was strongly reductionist inits failed attempt to eliminate ormarginalise ethnic identities. Nor couldit cope readily with the diversity thatcommunist modernisation created, interms of industrialisation and urbanisa-tion—including massive migration from


rural areas to towns without sufficientprovision to learn the skills of urbanliving.

Communism had no concept of rightsat all. It did give people a status—that of‘worker’, say—but it established noproper procedures for validating rightsand duties. It was arbitrary and unpre-dictable; hence those ruled by commu-nism learned few of the skills needed todeal with conflict and contest. Thus whenthe security and coherence provided bythe communist state disappeared, theonly identity on which they could rely forthe construction of a stable order wasethnicity.

The sudden projection of ethnicity intothe public sphere took place without ad-equate understanding of what dealingwith other ethnic groups would involve.There were few or no criteria for recog-nising reasonable or unreasonable de-mands, no culture of self-limitation orcompromise. As a result, insecurity as toone’s cultural reproduction was intensi-fied. In these circumstances, individualrights were marginalised and those whocontrolled the agendas of the collectivitywere able to recreate a one-sided distri-bution of power. In this context, the con-trast with mono-ethnic post-communiststates is noteworthy. Where the state wasalready in existence before communism,it was sufficiently well grounded to

allow at least some regulated contest forpower, though in these states, too, inter-ethnic relations have been a major prob-lem. For new states the problem ismagnified, because they have to con-struct themselves from inadequate rawmaterials.

The inadequacy of these raw materi-als has been exacerbated by the war. Wargenerates insecurity and radicalisesthose involved. Where war has the quali-ties of an inter-ethnic conflict, anxietieswill focus on one’s cultural reproductionand all factors, demands, interests notperceived as enhancing cultural repro-duction will be delegitimated and sup-pressed. The radicalisation will beexpressed as polarisation and a thorough-going narrowing down of the cognitivefield, which then becomes fertile groundfor conspiracy theories and other formsof ideological thinking in which everyevent will be assessed through ethnicspectacles and fitted into a coherent pat-tern of ethnicisation.

The upshot of these propositions isthat the Yugoslav successor states, withthe exception of Slovenia, are grapplingwith multi-tiered problems of extraordi-nary complexity which make the recog-nition and validation of individual andminority rights all but impossible. Theweakness or absence of a culture of citi-zenship, the shallow roots of the rule of


law, the feebleness of civil society and thecorresponding ease with which politicalleaders can mobilise along ethnic linesmake for a situation in which individualrights are understood as deriving solelyfrom ethnic identity. Hence members ofother ethnic groups can be validly deniedtheir rights, because they are believed tobe determined to destroy one’s own. Thisis precisely the response that was re-ported from among the Serbs of Kosovoin March to the agreement that Albani-ans be permitted to study in Albanian,but that is by no means a unique case.

The validation of individual and mi-nority rights needs stable political sys-tems that function predictably and inwhich the exercise of power is transpar-ent and accountable. Without this, con-flict will be potentially open to rapidpolarisation from which retreat is verydifficult. This implies that external agen-cies (like the west) have a major role toplay in the foreseeable future in stabilis-ing the exercise of power; otherwiseethnicisation will be hard to block.

To bring that stabilisation about, theexternal agencies have to do more thancreate institutional structures. Theymust begin from the underlying proposi-tion that cultural reproduction requiressecurity at the symbolic as well as at theinstitutional level. This will demand pa-tient and constructive engagement and

sensitivity in understanding inter-ethnicity. Money, investment and eco-nomic activity are at best a helpful con-dition for stabilisation, but monetaryincentives will not do much to change theunderlying dynamic and it would be fool-ish to rely on them. Likewise, legal pro-vision will only work if the underlyingsecurity has been firmly established. In-ternational legal norms, like war crimes,are useful in creating a set of externalconstraints, but they will not be internal-ised by those affected while there is asubstantial constituency for ethnic per-spectives, and that is the accepted atti-tude of the majority.

At the end of the day, the instabilityof the post-Yugoslav space is political andonly political means will change that in-stability. In the current circumstances,that signifies a very considerable west-ern presence in Bosnia, adding up to aprotectorate, coupled with the need forpressure on all the other successor statesto move towards the procedural and sub-stantive recognition of rights that areessential for democracy. Similarly, thewest will have to persist with its policyof constraining Serbia from its course inKosovo, even while it must pay heed tothe (legitimate) symbolic goods that theSerbs have in the region. Active engage-ment in Macedonia implies a frameworkin which security is offered to both Mac-


edonians and Albanians. And Croatia willhave to move towards a system that ac-cepts and gives political expression to thediversity of Croatian society.

The west must be consistent and de-termined in this strategy and make itvery clear that it will behave in this fash-ion; otherwise, ethnicisers have an incen-tive to sit it out, to wait until the westtires of its commitment. And the westmust recognise that the special condi-tions of ex-Yugoslavia need specialremedies—chief among them the under-standing that threats to cultural repro-duction and survival as a communitycreate very long-term insecurities thatare not easily assuaged. Until they are,the region will remain unstable.

DiscussionFrank Steketee of the Council of Europeresponded by describing the evolution ofthe minority rights régime over which thecouncil presided.

Before 1989 it had been ‘a factory oflegal norms’, especially the EuropeanConvention on Human Rights. Promul-gated as this had been in the aftermathof World War II, the convention reflect-ed the spirit of the times—like the Uni-versal Declaration of Human Rights—in focusing entirely on the rights ofindividuals.

But the idea that minorities deserved

attention had remained an undercurrentthroughout the work of the council, re-surfacing in the 60s. In the 80s, the coun-cil had begun work on its languagescharter,1 though skirting the issue of mi-nority rights as such.

Nineteen-eighty-nine had acceleratedthe process, boosting membership of thecouncil to 40 with the subsequent acces-sion of central and eastern Europeancountries. Minority concerns were simi-larly reflected in declarations by the Or-ganisation for Security and Co-operationin Europe and by the UN: in 1992, thesame year the Council of Europe pub-lished its languages charter, the UN pub-lished its declaration on minority rights.2

It fell to the council to develop a legalinstrument.

But even though there remained acommitment that these rights should bedefined in individual terms—as attach-ing to ‘persons belonging to’ minorities—France (along with others) had baulkedat inclusion of the new propositions inthe European Convention on HumanRights, given the universalist characterof the latter (as well as of France’s politi-cal culture).

This had resulted in the frameworkconvention of 1994,3 which though lack-ing the justiciable status of the ECHR, viathe Commission and Court of HumanRights, nevertheless set a legal standard.


The convention had come into effect atthe beginning of this year, and states’compliance would be monitored by inde-pendent experts working to the Commit-tee of Ministers of the council. The councilalso advised governments more generallyon the compatibility of legislation withinstruments to which they had signed up.

Mr Steketee was pressed on the ad-equacy of the compliance mechanismsunder the framework convention andwhether there was still not governmen-tal resistance to minority régimes whichwere perceived as undermining territo-rial sovereignty. He said that the councilwould advise governments to consultthose whom the reports were meant tobe about and such reports would be madepublic for comment when furnished.Some 200 NGOs enjoyed consultative sta-tus with the council.

But he admitted: “The arsenal is notvery impressive.” The option of expulsionof a recalcitrant state from the councilhad only been deployed once in its his-tory—in fact, the Greek colonels had leftjust before they were pushed.

Thus it was suggested that there re-mained a need for pressure for the frame-work convention to have full conventionstatus. Nevertheless, in the meantime,it provided a benchmark against whichNGOs could demand governmental com-pliance in their treatment of minorities.

The importance of international pres-sure in ameliorating intercommunal con-flict was clearly recognised. Very littlethat was positive that any of the key play-ers in ex-Yugoslavia had done, it waspointed out, had been done because theyhad felt it was right to do it (a factorclearly evident with various players atvarious times in Northern Ireland).

It was suggested there needed to bebetter monitoring of states’ behaviour—for example, the performance ofCroatia—and a more credible militarythreat so that states would not believethey could get away with acting as ‘in-ternational delinquents’. The lack of anycoherent policy by ‘the west’ towards ex-Yugoslavia was inevitably highlighted inthis regard—including the effect of pre-mature recognition of Croatia andBosnia-Hercegovina in triggering thewar.

In terms of handling division betweengroups internally, a rider was initiallyexpressed that the multiple componentsof any society should not be reduced tomulti-ethnicity. The risk was of an elisionfrom ethnic élites to ethnic groups with,in the process, the exclusion of othersenses of group membership. Hence theimportance of NGOs in making it possiblefor societies to be ‘self-managing’ (ratherthan, say, being reduced to internat-ional protectorates)—for there to be ‘civil


DD

democracy’ with a proper division ofpower between politicians and civicgroups. This led to a discussion of theneed for ‘transcendent symbolism’ if sucha scenario was to be possible.

The German post-war experience inthe wider Europe had at least shownnegatively how there could be adownplaying of national identity whichmight otherwise be deemed aggressive.And efforts had been made to find sym-bols for people living together—witnessthe visit by the chancellor Willy Brandtto the Warsaw ghetto, which had drawna line under the past and established abasis for a new commonality.

The difficulty of constructing sharedsymbols was however recognised—espe-cially in the light of the non-correspond-ence between state and ‘nation’ inNorthern Ireland. It was also suggestedthat it was more difficult to handle di-versity between religious groups thanthose that were linguistically divided (asin Belgium, for example).

But the European Union was nowperceived as more relevant in NorthernIreland—with its financial assistance—and hence there was perhaps more rec-ognition of the potential of itstranscendent symbolism. In Romania,to take another example, there hadbeen some progress towards accept-able symbolic arrangements between

the Hungarian minority and otherRomanians.

Yet in any such situation groupswould only come together on some is-sues—not all. The state and civil societyhad therefore particular responsibilitiesin this regard, as otherwise only ethnicidentities would prevail. The problemwas not ethnic cleavages, as these wouldalways be with us—the problem waswhether we could deal with them.

Footnotes1 Council of Europe, European Charter on Re-gional and Minority Languages, Strasbourg,19922 United Nations, Declaration on the Rights ofPersons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Reli-gious and Linguistic Minorities, New York, 19923 Council of Europe, Framework Convention forthe Protection of National Minorities, Stras-bourg, 1994


John Fitzmaurice

In Belgium, it is taken for granted thathowever serious the inter-communityconflicts that beset the country be-

come, they will be resolved or at leastmanaged by peaceful and democraticmeans. This was, until Bosnia and per-haps until the ‘troubles’ in Belfast, neverregarded as a significant achievement,though perhaps it should have been. Bel-gians are now, and perhaps have alwaysbeen, critical of their political system andtheir political class. This fails to givecredit where credit is due in at the veryleast one respect—ensuring peaceful con-flict management.

It is often lost sight of that the verystructures so roundly criticised are pre-cisely those that were necessary to en-sure such management. Equally, it isoften forgotten that conflict managementdoesn’t happen automatically. Nor is nota one-off, once-for-all quick fix, but a

Diversity and civil society

painstaking process that needs constantattention—and investment of ingenuityand resources. Perhaps, part of the Bel-gian method consists precisely in a ratherlow-key pragmatism that is neither dra-matic nor easy to sell in public-relationsterms.

Its system is its lack of system—mud-dling through and self-deprecation. Per-haps like Molière’s Monsieur Jourdan,who spoke in prose without knowing it,Belgian political leaders practise crisis-management without knowing it, or atleast without shouting about it. That iswithout doubt the right approach in theBelgian political culture, and probablyany other way would not work at all. Butthe downside is to make the very real,but unsung, achievements of the systemvulnerable to at times ill-considered anddemagogic attacks.

Before looking at the way Belgianshave managed their inter-communityconflicts, let us examine the seriousness


of the conflict that had to be managed.Belgium is not a natural state—paceHenri Pirenne, the historian of Belgitudepar excellence. It only came into being in1830, though its contours had emergedas early as 1579. It was then that theCatholic southern provinces of the Span-ish Netherlands opted to abandon theirrevolt and to stay with Spain, whereasthe northern, Protestant provinces wenton to become the Netherlands and wererecognised as such internationally afterthe Peace of Westphalia in 1648.

After the short and unsuccessful in-terlude of the United Netherlands—forced on the former Spanish and laterAustrian Netherlands for geopoliticalreasons between the Congress of Vienna(1815) and the Belgian Revolution(1830)—a new independent and neutralstate, guaranteed by all the great pow-ers, emerged. Yet, in truth, this new Bel-gian state was just as much an artificialcreation as the United Netherlands,though for different reasons.

The French-speaking, Catholic andrapidly industrialising Belgians hadfound themselves marginalised, disad-vantaged economically and discriminatedagainst within the United Netherlands.They reacted by creating their new statein their own image and interests. Now,the Flemish population felt excluded.

The only language of public life in the

new state was French. It looked to Francefor its legal system and culture. Its eco-nomic and political life was dominatedby French-speakers. Most Flemish peo-ple could not vote under the limited suf-frage that prevailed until the first worldwar. The élite, even in Flanders, wasFrench-speaking. Justice was dispensedonly in French and, notoriously, in the19th century two Flemish men were triedand condemned to death in French, whichthey did not understand. Most soldierswere Flemish, but officers were French-speaking and gave their orders in French.

The history of modern Belgium is verymuch the history of how the Flemishmovement emerged to challenge this

discriminatory and untenable situationand, in the process, ultimately trans-formed the old centralised, unitary Bel-gian state into the new federal structure.This process was long and complex andby no means always positive or effective.Indeed, sometimes it was a two-steps-for-ward, one-step-back process. It was,though, the dominant issue in Belgianpublic life, at least from 1900.

Inter-community conflict can be exac-erbated and rendered more intractableby other factors that follow the samecleavage lines. Let us look at how suchfactors apply to the inter-community con-flict between Flemish and Walloons in


Belgium:—• Racial differences: Clearly, this factoris absent, as both Flemish and Walloonsare northern Europeans.• Religion: It was the religious differencebetween the Catholic south and the Prot-estant north which led to the split be-tween north and south that ultimatelymade the United Netherlands fail, issu-ing in the two separate states after 1830.But both Walloons and Flemish areCatholics. So, unlike Bosnia or NorthernIreland, religious differences have notbeen important.• Ideology: In the Baltic states, for ex-ample, Russians were communists,whereas the Balts were not merely na-tionalists but also anti-communist. InBelgium, while it can be argued thatWallonia leans more to the left and Flan-ders more to the right—which may addto the complexity of the political systemand may also add an extra argument infavour of federalism—ideological differ-ence are neither so sharp nor ideologicaldominance in each community so mono-lithic as to create a serious difficulty perse.• Minority enclaves: A key question iswhether different communities are con-centrated or spread. In Northern Ire-land, there is of course someconcentration, but there is also somespread of minority enclaves in the areas

of the other community. In Bosnia, thisis clearly the key problem, whereas theabsence of significant Serb enclaves inSlovenia made it possible for Slovenia toaccede to independence without majorconflict. In Belgium, there are only somesmall minority enclaves, or exclaves, ineach of the other communities, mostlyvery close to the language border. Theexceptions are the 10-15 per cent Flem-ish minority within Brussels and theFrench-speaking minorities and evenmajorities in Flemish municipalities justoutside Brussels, a situation which cor-responds to the English-speaking minori-ties in and around Montréal in Québec.

The strong attachment of both com-munities to Brussels is important. Popu-lation is spread within the city. There areno very strong Flemish areas. It cantherefore not be split. Neither commu-nity wants to abandon Brussels. It hastherefore been the cement that holds thecountry together. It has been a factor forcohesion, whereas larger enclaves else-where, inside the linguistic borders,would have made for conflict.• External irredentism: In Bosnia, Serband Croat minorities were exclaves bor-dering on Mother Serbia or Croatia, bothstates that were stronger than their Serb,Moslem or Croat enemies within Bosnia.The same is true of the Hungarian mi-nority in the Danube valley in Slovakia.


It was true of the Sudeten Germans inCzechoslovakia after Hitler came topower in 1933, but not before. In Bel-gium, Flanders and Wallonia—and, forthat matter, the small German-speakingcommunity—have powerful neighbourswith whom they have cultural andhistorical affinities and who could act asprotectors.

However, Walloons do not want to joinFrance and there is no French pressurefor them to do so. The so-called ratachistemovement is minuscule. Equally, theNetherlands has shown no interests inannexing Flanders and, since 1945, therehas been no Greater Netherlands move-ment in Flanders. Indeed, ironically, themost nationalist Flemish party, theVlaams Blok, intensely dislikes Dutchliberalism and permissiveness. It is notattracted to the modern Netherlands andhere religion could play a role, especiallyon the Dutch side: if Flanders acceded tothe Netherlands, it would upset the reli-gious balance in the new state.• Economic divergences: In the 19th cen-tury, Wallonia was the economic heart-land of Belgium, as Flanders had beenin the middle ages. Indeed, after Britain,industrial Wallonia and especially theSambre-Meuse coalfield was the cradleof the European industrial revolution—mightily aided after 1830 by the mercan-tilist policies of the new Belgian state.

Economic power was in the hands of theemerging French-speaking bourgeoisie.Of course, the positions of the Walloonindustrial proletariat and the Flemishpeasant were equally unenviable. How-ever, the degree of economic and socialexclusion was even greater in Flanders,exacerbated by political and linguisticexclusion.

Now there has been a reversal. Flan-ders is the dynamo of the modern Bel-gian economy. By any indicators ofeconomic and social wellbeing, Wallonianow fares worse and has been deterio-rating for at least two decades. Industrialdecline has devastated many areas. Un-til 1970, unemployment in Wallonia waslower than in Flanders. Per capita grossdomestic product was higher in Walloniauntil 1966. In 1959, Flanders only pro-duced 47 per cent of Belgium’s GDP, in1965 it produced 49 per cent, but by 1975it produced 56 per cent and now (1996)59 per cent. Per capita income is 115 per-cent of the EU average in Flanders butonly 91 percent in Wallonia.

Wage rates are significantly higher inFlanders. Unemployment is 10.5 per centin Wallonia but only 6 per cent in Flan-ders. Long-term unemployment is moreserious in Wallonia too: Flanders has cre-ated far more jobs and lost far fewer.Health costs, often an indirect indicatorof social problems, are higher and rising


faster in Wallonia and Walloon life ex-pectancy is lower. Taken together, therehas been a complete reversal. Walloniahas lost its sense of direction and dyna-mism. Wallonia has an image of being a‘loser’, with a self-image of low esteem,paralysis, outmoded and inflexible atti-tudes and institutions, poor adaptabilityand dependency on the state and aparticracie seen as more endemic therethan in Flanders.• Language and culture: Clearly, a com-mon language and culture can bridgeother cleavages and represent a solidplatform, within which different commu-nities can coexist. It may not be enough,but it can help. In former Yugoslavia,where the various languages spoken arevery close, language was not in itself afactor of division, but equally it was notan adequate bridge over other cleavages.In the Baltic states, sharp differences oflanguage and culture served to accentu-ate other divergences. Equally, in Irelandlanguage has not been a divisive factor.On the other hand, in Belgium, divis-ions between a Latin and a Germaniclanguage have been a, if not the, centralissue.

Objectively, it would be difficult tomaintain that the differences betweenWalloon and Flemish culture are such asto be decisive, though such differencesexist. It could though well be that such

differences will tend to increase overtime, as the two regions develop sepa-rately and as all minorities within theother major community disappear. Al-ready, it is fair to say that there is hardlyany distinct Belgian culture, no singleBelgian civil society, press, media orparty system.

Former national structures are dis-aggregating. Even the Catholic Churchis adjusting its diocesan system to thenew federal structure. There no one sin-gle demos and no national political de-bate. Very few politicians seek to operatein more than one community. It shouldbe underlined that this development isneither fortuitous nor accidental. It maynot matter, provided that—to use an oth-erwise notorious formula—the two soci-eties and cultures are indeed ‘separate,but equal’, and provided conflict manage-ment structures continue to functioneffectively.

I t was over a century after Belgian independence before Flemish consciousness and, in reaction, a defensive,

countervailing Walloon and Francophoneconsciousness put the communitarianissue at the top of the political agenda,though it had been moving up for a longtime before. With the rise of distinctlycommunitarian parties and movementson both sides of the linguistic frontier—


the Volksunie and the wider VlaamsBeweging (Flemish Movement) in Flan-ders, and the Rassemblement Wallon andthe increasingly ‘federalist’ FéderationGénéral des Travailleurs de Belgique andthe Front Démocratique des Franco-phones in Wallonia and Brussels—the is-sue reached out and grabbed a reluctantpolitical class by the throat. It could nolonger be ignored, as it was creating un-tenable strains within the as yet stillunitary traditional political families,under pressure from radicals within theirown communities.

At its highest, in 1971, regionalistparties won 22.3 per cent of the vote and45 seats in the 212-member Chamber. In1974, the regionalist share slippedslightly to 21.2 per cent, bur they in-creased their number of seats to a record47. Clearly, the regionalist parties werethere to stay and had become a force tobe reckoned with. This was a clear demo-cratic alarm-bell which politicians couldonly ignore at their peril. In any case, theold unitary ‘Belgique à Papa’ was fastbecoming ungovernable. Business asusual was not an option. New and crea-tive solutions were called for.

Before looking at the specific remediesintroduced stage-by-stage after 1970,which ultimately transformed Belgiuminto a federal state by 1993, it is impor-tant to understand what has aptly been

called ‘the Belgian method’, which hasbeen central to crisis management.Without it, the specifics could nothave worked. Let us deconstruct the Bel-gian method and look at its principalcharacteristics:—• Create a process ...: The first step wasto create a process, through various formsof inter-community dialogue, in whichcreative ideas could be floated and ma-ture, contained until the time was ripe.Beyond each step or phase, beyond eachgovernment, beyond each election therewas the transcendent process itself. Allissues became negotiable, but only withinits cocoon. This was a powerful incentiveto enter the process and stay in it. It thusachieved a certain independence fromeach immediate issue and from the con-temporary set of participants. A favour-ite formula beloved of the prime ministerJean Luc Dehaene sums up this aspectvery well: “Tout est dans tout” (every-thing is interconnected) and “Rien n’estdécidé aussi longtemps que tout n’est pasdécidé” (nothing is agreed until every-thing is agreed).• Include not exclude: This applies bothto actors and issues. Part of the delicateart is to bring together just the right ac-tors and just the right package of issuesfor each phase, so that these as it werequasi-automatically coincide. In fact,composing the group of actors to be


brought on board is probably the mostimportant step. Actors tend to bring theirbaggage of issues. If you bring too manyand incompatible issues, there will be noagreement; if too few, there will be nosolutions. If this initial choice is wellmade, the chemistry will begin to workand people will be bound into the proc-ess and invest political capital in it.

This last is vital to success. Overloadwill likely lead to failure. With underloadthere will be too few issues to package-deal within. There must be enough foreveryone here and now—not just jam to-morrow for those required to make im-mediate and visible concessions—to getthe ball rolling. It is a basic rule of thumbthat the dynamism of each phase rarelyexceeds a year. Promises and concessionsbeyond that are, in Belgium at any rate,seen as having little credibility. The 1980and 1988 phases ran out of steam pre-cisely because one partner felt that hewas getting nothing he really wanted outof the process.• Flexibility: Belgian negotiators are lessinterested than others in models andstructures with an inner logic or intel-lectual tidiness than with what works.When, early in the process, no onewanted to admit that they were actuallycreating a federal state, they just did itand claimed the opposite. There has in-deed been only one attempt at a global,

coherent settlement—the Egmont Pact of1977, intended to be implemented overtwo legislatures. Significantly it failed,but many bits and pieces were recuper-ated, bent into new shapes and reused,often many years later. It had been toocoherent, too explicit. It showed tooclearly the final destination, which hadto be revealed only gradually.

Complex, contradictory, inelegant,pragmatic, asymmetrical temporary per-manent arrangements, creating a denseinstitutional thicket, work better. We owethe asymmetrical arrangements betweenFlanders and Wallonia and Brussels, andelements of non-geographical federalism,

John Fitzmaurice (left) makes a point to George Schöpflin


to this creative, lateral thinking. Thisapproach mixes affirmation of principleswith practical solutions which deviatefrom or even contradict them.• Institutional solutions: A key part ofthe Belgian method is its preference forinstitutional solutions. An institutionallabyrinth creates shock-absorbers andbuys time. Problems can be smothered,lost, ‘dialogued to death’. Those demand-ing radical reform are obliged to definean institutional solution, which then be-comes the outer limit of the debate. Thisapproach worked well in relation to Brus-sels. A balanced institutional approach,consisting of guarantees for the Flemishminority in Brussels going well beyondwhat their numerical strength would jus-tify, compensated the Flemish concessionof 50/50 representation in the federal gov-ernment and various minority-activatedmechanisms in the federal parliament.• Leadership style: The process may attimes be complex and diffuse—part of itsstrength—but it always has leadershipbuilt into it. It may be a different leader-ship at different phases: the prime min-ister, party presidents, special co-chairs(Flemish/Francophone), experts ... Lead-ership must be directive, but discrete. Itmust set agendas, ask the right ques-tions, force players out of the bushesby requiring them to respond to options.It must manage time and deadlines

intelligently. There must be neither toomuch nor too little leadership.• Civil society: It is often argued in rela-tion to the transitions in central Europethat one of the most serious dysfunctionsin the systems that have evolved since1989 is that formal political institutionshave been created without the supportof a functioning civil society, acting as avital, two-way transmission belt betweenthe institutions and the atomisedcitizenry. Clearly, Belgium does not lacka dense and active civil society—on thecontrary. Like all ‘pillarised’ consoc-iational democracies, there is in Belgiuma very well developed pillarised civil-society network, which has been a keyunderpinning of the Belgian method. Thepillarised structure enables the éliteleadership of each to deliver ‘its’ pillar innegotiations.

When Belgium was a unitary, central-ised state, civil-society networks wereessentially national, with at most de-pendent regional ‘wings’. The logic of theBelgian approach, based on an institu-tional decentralisation, was a parallelregional decentralisation of civil society.Indeed, many of the issues addressedby the most active civil-society net-works have been regionalised orcommun-itarised completely under thereform measures—health care, culture,use of languages, education, training,


environmental protection, planning andbuilding regulations, housing, publictransport and micro-economic interven-tion, just to name but the most im-portant policy areas. Regional andcommunity civil-society networks haveemerged to ‘shadow’ and influence thenew regional and community authorities.

A national civic society exists less andless. Though some may regret it andthere are limits and a downside to thisapproach, the rapid decentralisation ofcivil society, in parallel with institut-ional devolution, has been a positivedevelopment.

I t would take too long to give a detailedaccount of the meanders which overalmost a quarter of a century have led

from a unitary to a federal state. But themain characteristics of the Belgian fed-eral model can be summarised in tenpoints:1) The basic ground rules are laid downin federal legislation, only amendable bythe federal institutions, though the re-gions and communities do enjoy somelimited, but psychologically important,constitutional autonomy, allowing themsome independence and flexibility intheir own organisation and some addi-tional asymmetry.2) The basic texts (the Constitutionand Special Laws) provide for some

asymmetry, unusual in classic federalsystems. Brussels has a special statusand special institutions: it is both moreand less than simply a region like theother two. The Flemish Region and Com-munity have been fused, whereas theWalloon Region and the French-speak-ing Community have not, but the French-speaking Region may delegate somefunctions to the Brussels Region.3) There is a complex, limited but signifi-cant, financial solidarity between the re-gions and communities, within but alsoacross linguistic boundaries.4) Procedural stabilisers have been builtin to prevent political instability—for ex-ample, the regional parliaments can notbe dissolved. The right of dissolution ofthe Federal Chamber is now very re-stricted. In principle, all governments aresupposed to serve the full four-year term.At the federal, regional and communitylevels, a no-confidence motion must be aso-called constructive censure motion—on the German model—proposing a newpremier at the same time as removingthe old one.5) Wide ranging socio-economic powers,as well as cultural and personalised serv-ices, have been devolved. Residual pow-ers lie with the sub-regional authorities.This again is relatively unusual.6) Some elements of non-geographicalfederalism are included, through bodies


responsible for providing personal serv-ices to people in Brussels on the basis oftheir membership of a given languagecommunity, rather than on a geographi-cal basis.7) Significant rights to conduct interna-tional relations and conclude treatieshave been devolved to the regions andcommunities, without requiring the ap-proval or intervention of the federal gov-ernment, in those areas where theregions or communities enjoy devolveddomestic competence.8) There is an Arbitration Court—in allbut name a constitutional court—whicharbitrates in legal disputes between thevarious levels of government, and an ex-tensive network of contact committees toprevent and resolve disputes by consul-tation, co-operation and co-ordination.This is an example of affirming a princi-ple—devolution of power—whilst estab-lishing practical measures to resolveproblems of overlap and the need forpractical co-ordination.9) The system is based on representativedemocracy only. Direct democracy wouldthreaten many of the delicate checks andbalances built into the system and wouldpossibly cause open conflict between com-munities, if the result of a referendumwas different in each—as indeed hap-pened in the only national referendumever held, on the future of Leopold III

after the second world war.10) The system is underpinned by com-plex reciprocal minority guarantees atevery level, based on community mem-bership. The federal government must bemade up 50/50. The same applies to thecabinet of the Brussels Region. Certaintypes of bill require a special majority fortheir adoption—that is, a majority of themembers of each linguistic group in therelevant parliamentary body. People liv-ing near the language border or nearBrussels are accorded some limitedfacilities for the use of their own lan-guages, in their relations with the au-thorities, and in some cases they mayvote across the language border. Other-wise strict principles of territoriality andunilingualism apply, except in bilingualBrussels.

What factors will tend to hold thesystem in a stable balance andwhat factors will tend to under-

mine the system and perhaps push it to-wards separatism? First, stabilisingfactors:—• Political investment: The political par-ties have invested considerable politicalcapital in the process for a long time.They will not wish to forfeit that lightly.With the exception of the far right, allparties have at least some investment inthe process, whether or not they are in


government. Indeed the Green partieshave never been in government, but theysupported the St Michael’s Day Agree-ment of 1993 which was the latest stonein the edifice.• Flemish self-confidence: IncreasingFlemish self-confidence can lead tolonger-term stabilisation, as it couldmean that the Flemish numerical major-ity would lose its dangerous psychologi-cal sense of minority status: in Belgiumyou have a majority with a minority com-plex and a minority with a majority com-plex. Were that to become establishedover time, an accommodation betweenthe communities—based on some conces-sions to the Walloons going beyond theirnumerical rights—might become possi-ble, creating a climate of greater mutualconfidence.• Regionalisation: This will permit asym-metrical coalitions and greater flexibil-ity in policies to take account of regionaldifferences, reducing tensions within thesystem—as each community can go itsown way—and potentially simplifyingcoalition-building.• Brussels: Both communities are at-tached to Brussels—an 80 per centFrench-speaking enclave in Flemish ter-ritory, though a Flemish city until the19th century when it became a govern-ment city. It can not be geographicallydivided like Berlin or Beirut, as there is

no distinct Flemish part. In the event ofseparation, it would be an almost insolu-ble problem to decide what should hap-pen to Brussels. Hence, it has become aseparate bilingual region, with strongguarantees for the Flemish minority. Theproblem of Brussels requires, as it were,the parents to stay together for the child.Otherwise a ‘velvet divorce’ would bequite likely.

The paradoxical effort of the rightistFlemish nationalist party, the VlaamsBlok, to extend its appeal to French-speaking people in Brussels illustratesthe fact that, for many, Brussels is thelast nail holding the country together.The Vlaams Blok is trying to win sup-port in Brussels on the basis that onmany key issues—such as security, im-migration, education and health—Brus-sels people would be better off as part ofan independent Flanders. To make themwelcome, the VB would even permanentlyguarantee the existing bilingual régimein Brussels.

There are, however, also destabilisingfactors:—• External factors: Before the end of thecold war, the structure of European statesseemed set in stone. It seemed unlikelyany new European states would be cre-ated. Membership of the EU was also animportant argument against secess-ionist pressures within Belgium and


elsewhere. Since 1989, numerous newstates have been created in central andeastern Europe. The velvet divorce inCzechoslovakia saw both successor stateseasily assume the membership of inter-national organisations that had beenheld by Czechoslovakia, including asso-ciation with the EU. There is now nolonger any international taboo on split-ting states, provided it happens—as itwould in Belgium—in a peaceful, demo-cratic and consensual manner. Theinternational dimension is no longer asignificant stabilising pressure, and in-deed the example of Czechoslovakia couldoffer a model.• Lack of national political parties: Tra-ditionally, there were only three signifi-cant parties in Belgium, representing thethree traditional ‘political families’:Christian Democrat, Socialist and Lib-eral. These unitary, national politicalparties were an important cement, hold-ing the country together. By the mid-70sall three had split into pairs of Flemish-and French-speaking parties, making sixin all. There were of course also the com-munity parties and, later, the Greens andthe far-right Vlaams Blok. The pairsdrifted wider apart and tended to be moreconcerned about forming alliances or‘fronts’ within their own communities,rather than ideological alliances acrossthe community divide. Each pair of

‘sister’ parties first diverged on commu-nity issues, but then increasingly onother issues too.

Increasingly, there are not only nonational parties, but no political familieseither. There are also increasingly notone, but two—or, with Brussels, three—separate political systems, with differentcentres of gravity. Wallonia is dominatedby the Parti Socialiste (PS) and, accord-ingly, leans to the left. Flanders is domi-nated by the Christelijke Volkspartij (CVP)and leans more to the right. In Brussels,the Liberals, with their FDF allies, domi-nate. The growing distance between therespective members of the three politi-cal families, with additionally partiesoperating in one community only (the VB),will make for distinct coalitions at re-gional level and eventually for asym-metrical coalitions at federal level. Thesestructural developments are reinforcedand in part caused by the absence of na-tional media.• Lack of a national civil society: In thereform phase, the disaggregation anddecentralisation of the then nationalcivil-society networks was necessary anddesirable. It was then supportive of thereform process. In a consociational tra-dition, such networks naturally gravi-tate towards the most relevant andeffective power centres, in terms of theirareas of concern, as well as adopting an


instinctive subsidiarity or proximity ap-proach. As power centres devolved, theydevolved. Now, this process may havegone too far. It contributes to the grow-ing separation of the two polities. Likepolitical parties, civil-society networksand NGOs could be part of a residual na-tional cement, counter-balancing cen-trifugal tendencies, if they were able andwilling to do so.• Finance issues: There have always beenimplicit inter-regional transfers, aswithin any state. These have becomemore visible, and therefore the target ofcriticism, as federalisation has pro-ceeded. They have seemed to be a one-way street, with Flanders as the netcontributor to Wallonia. This has becomeparticularly clear in relation to the mostimportant remaining and increasinglyexpensive mechanism of financial soli-darity, the social security system. Feder-alisation of social security, and with itfinancial responsibility, has become a keydemand of the most radical Flemish na-tionalists. For Wallonia, this is regardedas non-negotiable. Failure to reach anacceptable compromise on this issuewould be regarded by some in Flandersas a signal that no more could be achievedthrough inter-community dialogue. Atthat point some would seek to put sepa-ratism on the agenda.• Political alienation: Increasingly, these

political structures, mentalities, proc-esses and arrangements, put in placebetween 1970 and 1993, have come un-der critical attack—as undemocratic,élite-driven, closed, inflexible, outmodedand unresponsive to new challenges. Inthe past, public support and indeed trustwas perhaps more passive than active,but it was available, provided the politi-cal system delivered. Now, the system issubject to two different, though related,criticisms: one is essentially substantivewhile the second is more a matter of styleand approach. Worse, the extreme con-centration of political energy in one di-rection has blunted political antennae tonew issues, whose emergence has beenignored—with the result that they havebeen addressed far too late, if at all. Thishas only served to increase alienation,with a sense that the traditional struc-tures are out of date, out of touch andirrelevant.

The complex institutional structures,specifically designed to address the issueof inter-community conflict, are notequally appropriate or effective in deal-ing with the quite different political is-sues rising to the top of the agenda. These‘new’ issues—such as deregulation andlabour-market flexibility and downsizing;the environment and urban decay; fi-nancing of social and cultural policy; im-migration and insecurity; education,


family breakdown and drugs; and, aboveall, reform of the legal and judicial sys-tem—cut across community boundaries.They threaten the vested interests thatdominate the ‘pillars’, and the partiesthat underpin the political system, andare far less amenable to massaging byinstitutional means. The structures thathave been developed will not adapt eas-ily to these new and quite different chal-lenges—and the more unpredictable,more emotional, atomised, single-issue,supermarket, mediatised approach to po-litical issues favoured by a more volatilepublic.

This situation is made worse by thesecond, closely related, leg of the critique.Here, the whole style of politics and com-promise—the heart of the Belgianmethod—is rejected. People are demand-ing a radically different kind of politics.They reject structures and organisations.They distrust traditional politics andpoliticians, whose motives are routinelyquestioned. In short, Belgium is in thegrip of severe alienation, or what Ger-mans call Politikverdrossenheit. Hence,the search for a ‘new political culture’—numerous reform projects and initi-atives to deconstruct the party-politicallandscape.

However, with a certain courage andunapologetic candour, Mr Dehaene hasasserted, correctly, that this would also

require new and different politicians. Noone knows where such can be found. Cer-tainly, they could not at the same timepreside over a political renewal, in linewith populist aspirations, and maintainthe painstakingly erected conflict-management mechanism which is thebest legacy of the ‘old politics’. Somethingwould have to give and, to coin a phrase,hard choices would have to be made.

At the risk of political incorrectness—because it has become a new conventionalwisdom to consider these trends as un-reservedly positive—I should like to en-ter a caveat. These trends can be positiveand provide a much-needed stimulus fornew thinking and change. We may,though, be in danger of political schizo-phrenia. Public opinion may want con-tradictory things. We may be entering anumber of very vicious circles. There aredangers in instant, media-driven, popu-list decision-making, which may turn outto be far from liberating or democratic.

Wanting more public services, but re-fusing to pay more tax; demanding moredemocratic decision-making, but refusingto take even the smallest part in publiclife, to join a party or attend a meeting;criticising politicians for short-termismwhilst refusing to listen to all but the veryshortest sound-bite; demanding evermore debate, whilst criticising the politi-cal system for its incapacity to take rapid


decisions ... The result is a fatal loss ofconfidence in all senses. Politicians areparalysed and afraid to act, while thepeople refuse to give them the necessaryconfidence to do so.

Certainly, these trends are by nomeans unique to Belgium. They haveemerged all across the democratic devel-oped world, sooner or later and to agreater or lesser extent. They have beenmore or less effectively managed. Like alate arriving unknown strain of ‘flu theyhave come late to an unprepared Belgianbody politic busy fighting a different vi-rus—inter-community conflict. It wasquite unprepared for these new demandsand new issues. To stay in the metaphor,without effective antibodies the impactwas all the more devastating. TheDutroux case, of course a personal trag-edy for his victims and their immediatefamilies, could only achieve the impactit did because it was a symbol, a detona-tor, canalising people’s anger.

C an the Belgian method prove suffi-ciently adaptable and robust to ab-sorb this new challenge, or will all

the carefully constructed institutional re-sponses built up over the past 25 yearsbe swept away by the dammed-up flood-water of public opinion? Can a construc-tive dialogue and indeed dialectic beestablished between these new trends,

which will not go way, and old structuresand methods? That is the key questionfor the future of the Belgian model.

Some would seek to divorce the debateabout the search for a new political cul-ture from the communitarian debate.This is dangerous and short-sighted.Should the heavy electric charge nowcoursing around blow the fuses so care-fully built into the system, and short-circuit it, separatist tendencies mightbecome uncontrollable and with theminter-community conflict. Optimists (andthose for whom the issues of the new po-litical culture are paramount) would re-spond, perhaps complacently, thatviolence, or even severe conflict, is un-likely. So they said about Yugoslavia.

They may, hopefully, be right, but onlyif the structures of federal Belgium arenurtured and allowed to do their workfor some time. It is far too soon to con-clude that they have done that work andneed no longer be maintained. It wouldbe dangerous to blow the Belgian methodout of the water yet. The structures arestill needed. Time will tell whether theycan adapt to a new and undoubtedly moredifficult political environment.

DiscussionRichard Lewis of the European Commis-sion (and so, like the speaker, a Brusselsinhabitant) responded by saying how


Belgium shared the experience of Bosniaor Northern Ireland in being dominatedby its history. Thus solutions had onlybeen found when politicians looked for-ward rather than back.

The Flemish movement had originallybeen quite moderate, but as the Walloonshad built the state in their own image ithad become more extreme. An opportu-nity had been missed to become a bilin-gual state in the 30s, as the Walloonsrefused to speak Dutch even though theFlemings were mostly prepared to speakFrench. Nowadays, however one could beforced to use Dutch in official dealings inFlemish communes—a requirement ar-guably in contravention of EU law on thefree movement of people. A key factor inBelgium, however, preventing violentconflict, had been the absence of inter-vention by the ‘kin’ states of the Nether-lands and France.

The problem of the ‘Belgian model’was its ‘over-politicisation’ of everything.Thus the series of scandals surroundingthe case of the alleged child murdererMarc Dutroux reflected the lack ofindependence of the policing and justicesystems.

Moreover, the fact that the Belgiangovernment was based on communal ar-rangements—as in Bosnia and NorthernIreland—rather than the rights of citi-zens within a state meant there was a

danger of a ‘slippery slope’ towards sepa-ration, especially as the Flemish-Walloonfiscal transfers weakened intercommunalsolidarity. A ‘divorce’ remained, however,unlikely—and even in that event wouldcertainly be ‘velvet’, rather than violent.

Where did the European Union fit in?Current EU trends towards integrationwere unlikely to turn Brussels into a‘Washington DC of Europe’. Conversely,the growth of ‘Euro-regionalism’ had beenpursued by Flanders in making contactswith other regions—as evidenced at theround-table by the Flemish participantrepresenting the Assembly of EuropeanRegions, Hans de Belder.

Mr de Belder recalled earlier discus-sion of how identity was contextualised.It was therefore possible, he said, to havea primary identity as Flemish/Walloonand a subsidiary Belgian identity, as wellas a European one. In that sense ‘divorce’was not an issue.

He stressed that the protectionsfor the two communities built into theBelgian model fostered better cross-communal relations, and it was similarlysuggested that the language barrier wasa source of security rather than insecu-rity. But this view was contradicted bythe opposite claim that relationships incivil society between Flemings andWalloons were experienced as being veryuncivil. There was a trend towards


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‘situational indifference’ betweenFlemings and Walloons, as evidenced byhow young Flemings these days learnedEnglish or German rather than French.And where did other groups—migrants,for example—fit in?

Discussion inevitably turned as towhy the Belgian case (for all its problems)‘worked’, whereas separation betweenCzechs and Slovaks had proved irrevers-ible. In Czechoslovakia, the right partieshad not been brought together with theright issues. Issues had not been ad-dressed professionally but, as elsewherein post-communist countries, in an emo-tional and unclear way. Democracy washard work, whereas nationalists andpopulists had simple messages, such asin Slovakia that ‘we (excluding Hungar-ians, of course) are the masters now’—even though it was the Czechs who werethe principal beneficiaries of the parti-tion, as they sloughed off their poorerpartners.

But it was also argued that, in Bel-gium, the demand for ‘good governance’in the wake of the Dutroux affair re-flected a profound political crisis. AsLebanon had indicated—when its elabo-rate power-sharing system collapsed un-der the pressure of the Palestinianquestion and demographic changes in the1970s—even good working models couldcollapse in a changed context because of

their rigidity.What was clear was that the

intercommunal conflict would never be‘resolved’ in Belgium. There would al-ways be ‘two communities’ whose rela-tionships would have to be managed.

It was also clear, however, that herethe analogy with Northern Irelandended. The option of separation in Bel-gium, as indicated, did depend on theabsence of significant enclaves withineach community. With its sectarian dis-persal, Northern Ireland simply did nothave that luxury, it was pointed out. Thepartition of 1922 had thus been a violentdivorce and could not be repeated. Forbetter or worse, unless converted into ajoint-authority or international protector-ate, Northern Ireland only had one op-tion—coexistence.


Adrian Guelke

The concepts of self-determination andpopular sovereignty share a commonproblem. How does one determine

who the ‘self ’ entitled to self-determina-tion should be? Similarly, popular sover-eignty—the idea that the people shallgovern—begs the question ‘who are thepeople?’ or, if you like, ‘who has the rightto say who the people are?’

Both ideas came out of the democratictransformation of the late 18th century,associated with the French revolutionand American independence. In practice,how these issues were addressed owed agreat deal to the framework provided bythe Treaty of Westphalia of 1648.

Westphalia established a number ofimportant principles:• sovereignty—the idea that only sover-eign states could negotiate treaties;• territoriality—the idea that territorywas the basis of statehood; and

• impermeability—the idea that exter-nal actors should not be able to dictateto groups within some other state.

Westphalia provided the basis for therise of the modern state, the growth ofbureaucracy and the frequency of warsin the 17th century, consolidating thegrowth of what became known as thenation-state.

Once the idea had taken root that thepeople, as citizens, were entitled to de-termine how they were ruled, the ques-tion quite naturally arose as to whetherthey wished to be part of a particularstate, even if the latter idea had poten-tially massively disruptive implications.

An example of the acceptance, never-theless, of that idea at an early datewas the holding of a plebiscite in Savoyin 1792, on whether it should formpart of France. But the principle of self-determination really came into its ownmuch later—during the course of the firstworld war.

Self-determination and sovereignty


Thus, an Austrian note of January1917 sourly recorded: “if the adversariesdemand above all the restoration of in-vaded rights and liberties, the recogni-tion of the principles of nationalities andof the free existence of small states, it willsuffice to call to mind the tragic fate ofthe Irish and Finnish peoples, the oblit-eration of the freedom and independenceof the Boer Republics, the subjection ofNorth Africa by Great Britain, Franceand Italy, etc.”

The person most closely associ-ated with the principle of national self-determination, as it was then formulated,was the president of the United States,Woodrow Wilson. Wilson made imple-mentation of the principle of nationalself-determination a fundamental part ofthe allies’ war aims in his 14 points andfour principles of January 1918.

The use of the term ‘national’ definedthe people entitled to self-determinationas the members of a nation. That, ofcourse, begged the further question ofwhat constituted a ‘nation’. The tendencywas to apply cultural and, particularly,linguistic criteria.

In practice, this proved lethal to themulti-national empires of eastern Eu-rope: the Tsarist empire, the Austro-Hun-garian empire of the Hapsburgs, thealready sick Ottoman empire and, to adegree, the German empire. Given the

complex ethnic mosaic in eastern Europe,the potential for sub-division was consid-erable. In practice, old-fashioned powerconsiderations and strategic interestsplaced a brake on how far the process ofdisintegration went.

So the logic of cultural/linguistic cri-teria was not followed blindly in the forg-ing of new states. Thus in the case of theGerman-speaking South Tyrol, Italian in-terest in control of the Brenner pass over-rode other considerations and the areawas included in Italy. Instead of twostates, the Czechs and Slovaks forged onestate—recognition of security interestsand considerations of economic viabilityplayed a part in this.

Fear of Italy was a factor in the crea-tion of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croatsand Slovenes, which became Yugoslavia.The language of Serbo-Croat was createdto bind the country together—just as ithas been deliberately disavowed to un-derline the divorce between Serbs andCroats today.

Inconveniently, however the culturallinguistic criteria were bent, people didnot live in neat homogeneous territories.The question of minorities withinstates—leading, in a few cases, to theredrawing of boundaries after plebiscites,to provide the best ‘fit’ with people’swishes—became a preoccupation of theLeague of Nations.


But the principal way the issue ofminorities was dealt with at the time ofthe peace treaties was the insertion inthe treaties of clauses on minority rights,so that, to quote Alfred Cobban, “in oneway or another, every one of the lesserstates of Central and Eastern Europecompulsorily or voluntarily undertook toguarantee certain rights to its minori-ties”—which, I should add, did not in-clude any right of self-determination.

However, the imposition remainedbitterly resented and even its limitedcommitments were poorly honoured.Weak states saw minorities as a securitythreat.

Kemalist Turkey, emerging out of thedisintegration of the Ottoman empire,took hostility towards minorities towardsits logical conclusion, with the genocideof Armenians, the non-recognition ofKurds (by labelling them simply moun-tain Turks) and—following a disastrouswar with Greece—the transfer of popu-lation. I suppose it might be said in fa-vour of the policy of transfer that it wasa two-way process. What tends to stickout today is what the transfer left outbecause it was under British rule—namely, the island of Cyprus.

The implication of the principle ofnational self-determination—that mem-bers of a common cultural/linguisticgrouping belonged in one polity—proved

a potent weapon in Hitler’s hands. Therewere German minorities scattered acrosseastern Europe, into the depths of theSoviet Union, for Hitler to champion.

The case that stands out is that of theSudeten Germans in western Czechoslo-vakia. Poor democratic Czechoslovakia,constructed on the principle of nationalself-determination—on the eminentlycontestable basis that Czechs andSlovaks could be counted as one people—included within its boundaries substan-tial others making up more than a thirdof its population. Hitler was able to usethe lever of the existing interpretation ofthe norm of national self-determinationto destroy the country.

A fter the second world war, there wasa determination that no great powershould be allowed to use minority

rights as an instrument for its own am-bitions. The result was a de-emphasis onminority or group rights of any kind. In-stead, the UN stressed individual humanrights. The term minority does not ap-pear in the UN Charter.

At the same time, the term ‘national’in front of ‘self-determination’ wasdropped and reference simply made tothe principle of self-determination. A newanswer was provided to the question asto who was the ‘self ’ entitled to self-determination, and that was ‘the people’.


And who were ‘the people’? They were theinhabitants of a particular territory: thecriterion was no longer an ethnic, cul-tural or linguistic one, but territorial.

It was an appropriate criterion for theprocess of decolonisation, though theterms of the new norm were not univer-sally accepted as that process evolved.The colonial powers weren’t reconciled togiving up all their colonies, especially incases where they had special interests ofa strategic nature or where there weresettlers.

So there was a contest for legitimacybetween the colonial powers and the anti-colonial movement in a number of cases.The colonial powers invariably lost, even-tually, but to prove their legitimacy anti-colonial movements had to demonstratetheir capacity for mass mobilisation.Since colonial powers wishing to hang onto territory did not allow a free vote, ru-ral guerrilla warfare was an attractiveoption for nationalist movements intenton establishing mass support.

More or less at the end of the processof decolonisation, the international com-munity, through the UN General Assem-bly, set down the new interpretation ofthe principle of self-determination, in the1970 Declaration of Principles of Inter-national Law Concerning Friendly Rela-tions and Co-operation among States inAccordance with the Charter of the

United Nations.Let me emphasise. This was no ordi-

nary resolution of the General Assembly.It was the outcome of prolonged negotia-tions and passed by the General Assem-bly, without a vote, under a specialconsensus procedure indicating unanim-ity or near-unanimity among the mem-bers. It is worth quoting from the sectionon self-determination at some length:

The establishment of a sovereign and in-dependent State, the free association orintegration with an independent State orthe emergence into any other political sta-tus freely determined by a people consti-tute modes of implementing the right ofself-determination by that people.

Every State has the duty to refrainfrom any forcible action which deprivespeoples referred to above in the elabora-tion of the present principle of their rightto self-determination and freedom and in-dependence. In their actions against, andresistance to, such forcible action in pur-suit of the exercise of their right to self-determination, such people are entitled toseek and to receive support in accordancewith the purposes and principles of theCharter.

The territory of a colony or other Non-Self-Governing Territory has, under theCharter, a status separate and distinctfrom the territory of the State adminis-tering it; and such separate and distinctstatus under the Charter shall exist until


the people of the colony or Non-Self-Gov-erning Territory have exercised their rightof self-determination in accordance withthe Charter, and particularly its purposesand principles.

Nothing in the foregoing paragraphsshall be construed as authorising or en-couraging any action which would dis-member or impair, totally or in part, theterritorial integrity or political unity ofsovereign and independent States con-ducting themselves in compliance withthe principle of equal rights and self-determination and thus possessed of a gov-ernment representing the whole peoplebelonging to the territory without distinc-tions as to race, creed, or colour.

Every State shall refrain from any ac-tion aimed at the partial or total disrup-tion of the national unity and territorial

integrity of any other State or country.

Three aspects of this declaration may betaken to provide the definitive interpre-tation of the principles of self-determi-nation for the post-colonial world. Theseare:• the anathema against secession,• the kind of world the norm implied, and• the link between the norm and politi-cal violence.

There were two important tests of theinternational community’s hostility to-wards secession during the 60s: the casesof Katanga in the Congo and Biafra inNigeria.

The Belgian Congo became the inde-pendent state of the Congo at the end ofJune 1960. Eleven days later, the coun-try’s south-eastern province of Katangaproclaimed its independence, a secessionthat was to last 31 months (until Janu-ary 1963). Secession was supported by amulti-ethnic alliance that included whitesettlers drawn to the region by the cop-per belt, which made Katanga by far therichest province of the country.

A mutiny in the Congolese army im-mediately after independence threatenedto plunge the country into chaos, prompt-ing Belgian military intervention andcreating the opportunity for Katanga’ssecession. The UN responded to the break-down of law and order in the Congo byembarking on its most ambitious exer-cise in peace-keeping, ONUC (Organisationdes Nations Unies au Congo).

The question of what ONUC was enti-tled to do under its mandate became asource of major controversy. A leading fig-ure in the uN operation who took a veryextensive view of ONUC’s mandate, includ-ing upholding the Congo’s territorial in-tegrity, was Conor Cruise O’Brien. Hewrote a book about his experiences, ToKatanga and Back.

O’Brien’s role in using UN troops to endKatangese secession made him into a fig-ure of hate among right-wing whites insouthern Africa, who supported the cause


of Katanga as helpful to their own. TheKatangan leader, Moise Tshombe, triedto mobilise international support forKatanga on the basis of its anti-commu-nism and as a model for relations be-tween whites and blacks. However, tomuch of the world, Katangese secessionlooked like an attempt to walk off withthe country’s riches.

Nigeria became an independent stateshortly after the Congo in October 1960;it was a federal system. Its democraticinstitutions survived until January 1966,when there was a military coup. The coupleaders were associated with the easternregion, the homeland of the Ibos. Whenthey made an attempt to impose a uni-tary system on the country, there was asecond military coup, in July 1966, thistime led by northern officers.

A number of Ibo officers were mur-dered during the coup. It was followedby more widespread mob violence againstIbos in the northern region. These cir-cumstances understandably stimulatedsupport for secession from Nigeria amongIbos in the eastern region; another fac-tor was the eastern region’s oil wealth.

Biafra declared its secession in May1967; civil war followed. It ended withBiafra’s capitulation in January 1970.Biafra was led by a charismatic figure,Col Ojukwu. It won most internationalsympathy during 1969, as starvation

became an issue and NGOs presented thesituation in the eastern region as a hu-manitarian emergency. An interestingaspect of the Nigerian conflict, however,was the support given to the federal au-thorities across the normal cold-war di-vide, with Britain and the Soviet Unionsupporting the federal government.

These two cases rammed home theinternational community’s rejection ofsecession.

Yet, ironically, shortly after the worldendorsed the 1970 declaration, an issuearose which undercut the anathemaagainst secession. Elections in Pakistanthat December represented a massivevictory for the Awami League, whichcalled for Pakistan to become a looseconfederation.

The Awami League had overwhelm-ing support in the east wing of the coun-try and, in the face of this demand, theWest Pakistan political élite decided touse the army to suppress it. At this point(April 1971), the league opted for seces-sion. West Pakistan’s resistance lasteduntil December, when it surrendered af-ter Indian intervention in support of thecreation of Bangladesh.

Three factors rationalised Bangla-desh’s secession as a special case:• Pakistan was the product of partitionitself,• its east and west wings were separated


by hundreds of miles, and• the people in the east wing actuallycomprised a majority.

Let me briefly deal with the two otheraspects of the post-colonial norm men-tioned earlier. First, the kind of world itimplied—a world comprised entirely ofsovereign, independent states with per-manent boundaries.

The emphasis on sovereignty wassimilar to Westphalia, but what was dif-ferent was that states were not requiredto demonstrate their control of territoryto secure recognition. The new norm pro-vided international underpinning andlegitimacy for weak states.

Moreover, those fighting for self-determination (not secession) were enti-tled to use violence and to get interna-tional support for their actions. In thecontext of 1970, this implied support forguerrilla movements in Angola, Mozam-bique, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), SouthWest Africa (now Namibia) and, ulti-mately, South Africa itself.

Outside of Africa, the internationalcommunity was reluctant to acknowledge‘unfinished business’ from the colonialera. But movements all round the worldlatched on to the legitimacy of using vio-lence in pursuit of self-determination bydefining their aims in terms of ‘nationalliberation’. Indeed, many movements in-cluded the term in their names.

Most of the small groups engaging incovert violence which appeared on theworld stage in the late 60s representedtheir actions as part of the struggleagainst imperialism. Their labelling as‘terrorists’ was a way of denying them anylegitimacy. The absolutism of the con-demnation reflected the threat they wereseen to pose to the new world order. Itwas a way of emphatically drawing theline and saying that there was a limit todecolonisation.

The post-colonial interpretation ofself-determination survived the chal-lenge of the Bangladesh exception. Butit did not survive the much greater chal-lenge of the demise of communism ineastern Europe and the collapse of theSoviet Union.

The latter might conceivably havebeen treated as a special case itself—asthe delayed deconstruction of the Tsar-ist empire. And the international commu-nity had a pre-existing commitment torecognise the independence of the Balticstates (Latvia, Lithuania and Lithuania)as they had been members of the Leagueof Nations—in their case it was a matterof the restoration of their rightful inde-pendence.

But what of the rest of the USSR? Anattempt was made to treat the remain-ing republics under the umbrella of theCommonwealth of Independent States—


indeed, Georgia got short shrift from thewest for trying to stay out. However, inthe end, the framework of the CIS failedto be credible and what emerged wereindependent states.

A curious aspect of this transforma-tion was that, before the break up of theSoviet Union, Byelorussia and Ukrainewere already members of the UN GeneralAssembly, thanks to the bargaining proc-ess at the end of the second world war.Stalin had wanted each of the union re-publics to have a vote to balance westernnumbers.

On top of the break-up of the USSR,which might somehow have been ration-alised, two of the successor states fromthe first world war also disintegrated:Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. It couldbe said that the break-up of Czechoslo-vakia was by mutual agreement, and thatthere was precedent for that in Singa-pore’s divorce from Malaysia. But Yugo-slavia could not be presented as otherthan a shattering of the anathemaagainst secession.

Y et if the post-colonial interpretationlies in ruins, it is far from clear whathas taken its place. Certainly, there

has been no declaration charting thechange, which has to be inferred. But wecan just about discern the principles of anew norm through the mists.

Its key elements can be described asfollows:1) The anathema against secession hasgone, but secession is to be limited to thepre-existing units of states. Secessionistmovements are not free to redraw theinternal boundaries on which they rely.This, at any rate, is what the interna-tional community is attempting to upholdin Bosnia.2) The rights of minorities have made acomeback. The old emphasis on majorityrule has weakened, as has the norm ofnon-intervention (as seen in the case ofthe Iraqi Kurds).3) The inadmissibility of the changing ofborders by force is being given wider ap-plication as a restraint upon ethno-nationalist ambitions, such as the‘greater Serbia’ ambition in the formerYugoslavia.

Elections are definitely the preferredroute for legitimate secessionism. Theproblem remains: what if the governmentdoes not allow elections to be held? Wecan look at Kashmir in this context.

Even this tentative account raisesmore questions that it answers about theapproach of the international community.The truth is the latter has yet to resolvethese issues on other than an ad hocbasis.

In conclusion, let me emphasiseone aspect of the new situation. The


weakening of the international commu-nity’s anathema against secession hashad important implications for minori-ties within entities created by secession.They can often feel disadvantaged by se-cession, especially as the emphasis givento ethnic mobilisation in the seceding en-tity tends to underscore that they are notmembers of the new national majority.

Examples of such problems or poten-tial problems are:• the place of Shetland Islanders withinan independent Scotland,• the place of ‘first’ (native) peoples in anindependent Quebec, and• the position of the Hungarian minor-ity in Slovakia.

Of course, while being sensitive to thegrievances and fears of such minorities,it is also obviously the case that it suitsthe proponents of threatened unions toraise the issue of such minorities as abrake on secession. It is notable how inCanada there has been a 180-degree turnin the attitudes of English and FrenchCanadians towards the rights of firstpeoples, on the basis of calculations ofhow recognition of such rights might af-fect the two settler communities.

That raises a further, final, question.How can the rights of minorities be pro-tected in new entities, without the ques-tion of their rights becoming a gambit inthe power politics of other states?

Discussion

Finn Chemnitz of the Organisation forSecurity and Co-operation in Europe be-gan his reply by saying that territorialintegrity was “almost a holy principle” forhis organisation, given its ‘security’ fo-cus. But he also stressed the other ‘bas-kets’ of OSCE work: economic co-operationand the ‘human dimension’.

The latter entailed support for demo-cratic institutions and the rule of law. Insupport of this, the OSCE had 17 missionsaround ex-Yugoslavia and the border re-gions of the former USSR. The focus waslargely on preventive diplomacy—politi-cal rather than legal.

Its work was determined by its 55member ambassadors meeting regularlyin Vienna as a permanent council. Butthe OSCE high commissioner on nationalminorities could himself decide, as anearly-warning mechanism, to send a com-mission to investigate a particular situ-ation before it became violent.

Having been the only European secu-rity organisation, the OSCE was now justone part of the evolving security archi-tecture and was uncertain of its role, evenits survival. And in particular it had notfound an answer to Prof Guelke’s finalquestion, of how to address the manipu-lation of minorities by big states.

The wider discussion explored the


emergent norms Mr Guelke had identi-fied. It was suggested that while theanathema against secession had gone,the presumption against it had not—wit-ness the international community’s fa-vouring of autonomy, but no more, forKosovo.

There was, after all, no ‘right’ to se-cession since this would be a collectiveright and there were no collective rightsas such. States were guarantors of rightsand to be legitimate had to grant thoseindividual, if particular, rights—such asto education in the mother tongue, for ex-ample—attaching to members of minori-ties. ‘Homeland’ states for such minoritiescould and should legitimately press forsuch rights. Developing an intergovern-mental régime was thus an avenue toexplore.

A negative example in this regard wasthe situation of Hungarians in Slovakia.The minority there felt unwelcome inSlovakia yet also did not identify with theHungarian state. The latter had takenan irredentist position in the early 90s,under the leadership of József Antall—who suggested that all Hungarians out-side the borders of the state came underits purview—but that period was nowover. The upshot of all this was that theSlovak Hungarians felt abandoned.

With respect to territorial integrity, itwas pointed out that in ex-Yugoslavia the

Badinter Commission of 1991 had in away resolved the dilemma by saying thatformer Yugoslavia had ceased to exist andtherefore territorial integrity no longerapplied. This had legitimised the refer-endum in Bosnia-Hercegovina, but thatin turn had led to the Serbian boycott andthe Bosnian war. A difficulty of movingto rely on the integrity of internal bor-ders was also that it offered a disincen-tive for centralised states to assuageminorities’ concerns, before these becamecritical, through granting internal au-tonomy.

It was suggested that western Europeprovided more encouraging examples ofhow sovereignty and self-determinationhad been reconciled. Signatories to theScottish Claim of Right—an affirmationof self-determination—were after all nowrepresenting British sovereignty in thenew Labour government. Similarly,Basque and Catalan rights had beenreconciled with Spanish sovereignty.So these concepts were organic andevolving.

The unalterable fact remained, how-ever, that two conflicting claims forself-determination could not be simulta-neously recognised. In such situations—including Northern Ireland—what wasrequired was institutional mechanismsto give space to different national identi-ties. This would be assisted by a rethink-


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ing of identity—of what, in this context,‘Irishness’ and ‘Britishness’ were—in lessconflictual ways. Thus, for example, un-ionists could accept being culturally‘Irish’ as long as that was not perceivedto be a ‘political cudgel’.

What was needed in such situationswas a practical process. Both groups hadto agree to seek accommodation. Civilsociety and the political class needed tohave the collective capacity and courageto achieve it. And an absence of violencewas necessary to reduce communal fears.

Both communities needed to be ableto ‘feel’ their national identity, ratherthan a sense of abandonment, and theprocess had to ensure paranoid versionsof what was entailed were undermined.The goal was for the two groups to sharethe same territory on a basis of mutualrespect, with a sense of moving forwardtogether.

More generally, a way forward wassignalled by an attenuation of the ideaof self-determination on the one hand,offset by a weakening of the imperme-ability of borders on the other. There hadbeen an implicit redefinition of self-de-termination as about autonomy or cul-tural rights, rather than secession. Butthere had equally been an underminingof boundary impermeability throughEuropean integration, German unifica-tion and erosion of the concept of ‘non-

interference’.This created the possibility that

the slipperiness of the notion of self-determination could be turned to positiveadvantage. Internal arrangements forautonomy or cultural rights, if allied totransfrontier relations with a perceived‘national home’, could substitute for theclassic sovereigntist—and separatist—concept of what self-determination en-tailed. Of course, states which weredetermined to play power games withscant regard to international law, exploit-ing minorities in the process, could stillmake mischief. Hence the need for a newcivility of international relations—of lawand institutions—which would militateagainst such rogue behaviour.


Mari Fitzduff

We are living during a transition periodin which the old world is in terminal de-cline but the contours of the new one are

not clearly discernible.1

On March 14th 1993, the people of An-dorra—numbering all of 7,000—overwhelmingly passed a referen-

dum granting themselves sovereigntyover the principality, hitherto shared be-tween France and Spain. They acquiredthe right to have their own currency,stamps and a seat at the United Nations,becoming the 184th member of that au-gust body. And they exemplified the seis-mic changes that are happening in ourworld.

When the UN was formed in 1945there were 51 constituents; by 1960 therewere 100. Today there are 189, at thelast count, and it has even been sug-gested that the number of states couldincrease to 2,000 by the year 2050—a not

impossible scenario if we look, for exam-ple, at the current break-up of the UnitedKingdom.

At the same time, the emergence of aglobal economy is deconstructing cur-rency and customs boundaries and ne-gating the control by nation-states overtheir own wealth. Financial markets arenow both transnational and mobile. La-bour is being transnationalised too, it hasbeen suggested, with large migrationsacross established boundaries. A world-wide system of communications is dimin-ishing cultural borders.

International lobby groups are thefastest growing power in politics. Mean-while, fewer citizens are voting in na-tional elections—less than half thecitizens of Japan and the US—and fewerare bothering to join political parties. Theformation of issue-based alliances is as-sisting the destruction of nationalpolitics.

These twin trends of fragmentation

NGOs and governments


Rapid response—the man from NATO (Harald Bungarten, left) prepares his reaction

and globalisation are creating a newdomain of ‘sub-politics’,2 dominated byeconomics, experts and the privatesphere—and, of course, non-governmen-tal organisations: “In the old world youhad to choose between left and right. Inthe new world you choose between glo-bal and tribal ...”3

Over 40 million people have beenkilled in wars since the second world war,most of them in intra-state conflicts.Since 1990, there have been some 150wars, in which at least 5 million havedied. At the moment, there are about 30taking place, almost all ethnic, politicalor religious—not international.

But fragmentation per se should not

be perceived as a problem. There is a lotto be said for devolution, as those in Scot-land who have argued for more localpower, control and responsibility—forwhich they are willing to pay increasedtaxes—have articulated quite clearly.The same sentiments are echoed in manylarge companies, who for several yearshave sought to decentralise, with result-ant gains in effectiveness and loyalty.

Nor, in itself, is globalisation. Al-though based on the edge of a tiny islandat the edge of Europe, every day I haveat least half-a-dozen trans-world conver-sations—at little expense because of thewonders of e-mail. I am part of a varietyof new communities and alliances, whichwould have been utterly impossible evenfive years ago.

Worries about a new axis of inequal-ity between those who have modern tech-nology with which to communicate, andthose who do not, are understandable. Yetdeveloping countries are likely to ben-efit most, and with little cost, from suchtechnology.

At a global level, we have been de-structively limited by our conservativeperspectives on how territories should begoverned. Northern Ireland has also suf-fered from the either/or perspective ofexisting states. It is now fairly clear thatno such either/or solution is going to besuccessful in addressing the needs of a


territory almost equally split in politicaland cultural aspirations.

The British and Irish governmentshave desperately tried to address thisneed through a variety of constitutionalalternatives, some unique in their will-ingness to consider extra-state possibili-ties for those who feel the need for them.We need much more such creativity, notjust in Northern Ireland but in the restof the world. Such creativity might havehelped avert the utterly destructive wayin which former Yugoslavia fell apart.

When the soul of a man is born in thiscountry, there are nets flung at it to holdit back from flight. You talk to me of na-tionality, language, religion. I shall try to

fly by those nets.4

O f course, Joyce did escape, flying toParis and Zurich—anywhere to getaway from the webs of belonging

which he felt so restrictive but aboutwhich he wrote so vividly. Most feel attimes an equivalent ambivalence aboutwhere and how we belong. The win/loseapproach to issues of territory and re-sources has been disastrous, leading alltoo often to the awfulness of ethnic es-sentialism and the associated ‘ethniccleansing’.

Dreams of a place for ‘our’ people—with our army, our language and oureconomy—are no longer viable. Only

about a tenth of the countries of the worldare ethnically homogeneous. And suchdesires are based on a psychological fal-lacy: “The problem with nationalism isnot the desire for self-determination it-self, but the particular epistemologicalillusion that you can be at home, you canbe understood, only among people likeyourself.”5

Such dreams, however, persist—espe-cially when we come face-to-face with acrisis of identity or inequity. New formsof co-operation are needed, emphasisingthe civic—as opposed to the ethnic—locality.

Thus, for example, the break-up of theUSSR beached dozens of ‘ethnic’ groups(still an unclear term), ranging from hun-dreds to millions of people, whichStalinist mobilisation had deposited inmixed territories—in the northern Cau-casus there appear to be at least 17groups seeking new forms of being in theworld. A Northern Caucasus EconomicCouncil, which could address economicneeds without a concomitant dilution ofpolitical identity, was mooted some yearsago. Similarly, a Council of the Isles hasbeen suggested as a possible strand toco-operative alternatives to the NorthernIreland conflict. Although untested, it isat least useful in assisting a new para-digm to emerge [and is now included asa British-Irish Council in the Belfast


agreement—ed].Increasingly important forms of inter-

national co-operation will, of course, bethe Internet and e-mail. A few monthsago, the centre which I head, INCORE, didsome work on conflict-management theo-ries and practice with a group of diplo-mats and senior executives from 20embassies. A listserv was set up to sus-tain e-mail contact within the group.When our South African participant re-ceived news that he was to be posted toMoscow, immediately lists of contacts andhints flowed through the listserv, easinghis way into his new world—and increas-ing the strength of those networks so vi-tal at times in the work of conflictprevention. Considering that the groupincluded people from Israel and Pales-tine, Pakistan and India, and Nigeria andSouth Africa—so generating unusual andpowerful contacts between often collid-ing worlds—the potential of sustainedlist services to provide alternative net-works to those based on traditional loy-alties becomes readily apparent.

Through our ever-ready lap-tops, dayand night, we bypass institutionalboundaries, governments, censorshipsystems and borders—as seminal docu-ments, minutes of meetings and contactnumbers become increasingly available.Hierarchies and formalities are diminish-ing—a peculiar consequence of e-mail—

and transparency growing. These possi-bilities are particularly important in aworld where we often need to bypass re-pressive régimes.

Am I my brother’s keeper? The recentupsurge in human-rights organisa-tions, many functioning at a global

level, is testimony to a new sense of in-ternational responsibility perhapsunique to our times. The capacity to ig-nore the wrongs of another’s régime hasbeen reduced in the last few decades,partly through the globalising media.Such knowledge, such concern, haseroded many principles which have in-formed the foreign policy of govern-ments—in particular, the concept of‘non-interference’ in the affairs of anothercountry.

It is easy to forget that this idea wasalmost sacrosanct until the last decade.Many will remember the wrath withinsections of the British government at theidea that the Republic of Ireland and,latterly, the US could contribute to a reso-lution of the Northern Ireland conflict.It took many years of argument to en-sure such co-operation and, indeed, for itnot to be deemed officially as interfer-ence. Most can recall similar argumentsover so-called interference in Yugosla-via—particularly where there wereno apparent economic interests to be


protected—and one still hears them, fromAlgeria to Kosovo.

The number of indigenous NGOs in-volved in human rights has also in-creased over the last decade, particularlyin places like Sri Lanka. Partly this is inresponse to the concerns of aid donors’domestic constituents about recipientgovernments’ utilisation of foreign funds,for good or ill. More generally, it has beennoted that the new emphasis on thenongovernmental sector reflects the in-tellectual framework of wider changes inmacroeconomic policy, privatisation, andthe reduced role of states in all aspectsof the economy and service provision.NGOs are seen as a dynamic alternativeto bloated state bureaucracies.

This change has been revolutionaryand, by and large, positive. I am glad thatthe EU is bargaining with Turkey over itshuman-rights record, in response to itsmembership application. I was glad whenwestern aid donors forced the Sri Lankangovernment to allow international hu-man-rights groups to visit the island tocheck out allegations of governmentalviolence. As a yardstick for funding bythe World Bank, the concept of ‘goodgovernance’ is also helpful—even ifthere are still questions about how to in-terpret it. It was right that the issue ofthe rights of women was at least raised,if not won, in regard to NGO and other

humanitarian involvement in Afghani-stan after the Taliban takeover. And thequestion of whether uN aid should belinked to human-rights development willbe one of our most productive debates ofthe next decade. Such challenges to in-ternal sovereignty, including interna-tional war tribunals and internationalmonitoring of elections—even if these areoften badly resourced—reflect a growingsense in the world that what affects citi-zens elsewhere is indeed of my concern.

Much ambiguity remains. The recentBritish defence review talks about use ofthe army as a ‘force for good’—but theprecise nature of that goodness is not yetagreed. Western defence forces generallyare suffering a crisis of identity, as theformer defence-of-the-realm role becomesever less clear. Explaining body bags com-ing home from Bosnia is an increasinglyuphill task, particularly in the US. Thisambiguity among many military person-nel—and politicians—about why theyshould risk the lives of their mainlyyoung men in far-away, war-torn lands,where there is no obvious security or eco-nomic gain, could prove a significantweakness in securing their commitmentto future peace-keeping operations.

This new agenda can be summarisedas creative approaches to developmentson the emerging global-local axis—par-ticularly approaches which can provide


alternatives to violence. What, then, isthe role of NGOs in furthering this agenda?One of increasing importance, if theywish it to be so. But they will only be suc-cessful, if they are prepared and most arenot.

In the past, there has been little ques-tioning of the positive role of the NGO.Most have been established to performworthwhile tasks they think are notbeing addressed—or not properlyaddressed—by governments or intergov-ernmental organisations like the UN. In-creasingly, many are functioning at aninternational level, as an adjunct, or evenalternative, to official aid—particularlythose working according to one or otherof the following four mandates:• providing humanitarian aid in emer-gencies,• promoting social and economic devel-opment,• promoting and monitoring humanrights, and• undertaking peace-building throughconflict prevention, management andlong-term reconciliation.

Increasingly too, such NGOs are recog-nising the interaction between these ob-jectives and developing new skills toaddress their additional mandates—forexample, there is a fashion for many aidagencies to undertake training in media-tion and negotiation skills. This has led

to some confusion, and difficulties forfunders and audit officers. Is Oxfam in-volved in charity or politics? For the mo-ment, it seem to have settled for what iscalled capacity-building, deemed bysome—somewhat naïvely—as relativelyneutral.

Without doubt, many lives have beensaved through the intervention of NGOswith these new mandates in areas of dis-aster and conflict. By casting a spotlighton human-rights abuses, they have ledmany governments to be increasinglymindful of scrutiny—with a concomitantcurtailing of some of the worst abuses.NGOs are also to be congratulated for theirencouragement in many areas of grass-roots participation in economic and so-cial programmes.

Because of their degree of inde-pendence and their tendency to betask-driven—as opposed to bureaucracy-led—they are often able to be innovativeand creative in how they approach theirtasks. And many have a capacity to crossinternational boundaries in a way thatis often impossible for governments toemulate.

With the growth—including budget-ary—of many NGOs and their increasingvisibility, there is however in many quar-ters a feeling that the honeymoon is com-ing to an end—that the apparent goodwilland harmlessness of such organisations


may no longer go unquestioned. Increas-ingly, NGOs—quite rightly—are comingunder scrutiny themselves.

Thus Stubbs6 has argued that manyof the actions of NGOs in ex-Yugoslaviahave eroded the middle classes and sus-pended civil-society activities. Eagen7

has suggested that in Mozambique NGOshave caused the underdevelopment oflocal government. In other places, theyhave been accused of succumbing to gov-ernment agendas—for example, in SriLanka by becoming involved long-termin areas held by government, but notthose controlled by the Tamil Tigers.They have also been accused in somecountries of selectivity in their advocacyof human rights—a charge, indeed, whichused to be levelled against Amnesty In-ternational over its condemnation of stateviolence in Northern Ireland, before itchanged its policy to allow parallel con-demnation of the violence of theparamilitaries.

The criticism of many NGOs by thevarious UN peace-keeping forces is legen-dary: charges of naïveté, meddling andintroducing their own—often compet-ing—agendas abound. The forces in turnare often resented by many NGOs, who seethe former as arrogant, hierarchical,sometimes trigger-happy and often fartoo susceptible to political forces backhome.

Recent stories of competitivenessamong NGOs themselves—fuelled often bytheir need for recognition on the worldstage, and from actual and potentialfunders—have also damaged their repu-tation. And, in some cases, they havebeen accused of dehumanisation in us-ing horror pictures of wartime atrocitiesas aids for fundraising.

As the nature of war is changing, the taskof the NGOs intervening in conflict settingshas become both more complex and morepromising.8

These criticisms, arising amidst—andpossibly stemming from—the increasing power of NGOs, provide, how-

ever, an occasion for the latter to reas-sess their focus and their future in thenew world of politics, globalisation andpeace-making.

Acting with integrity in any conflictis never easy: we know that to our costin Northern Ireland. Many local andinternational NGOs have had great diffi-culty acting effectively together in theregion. At least three factors have ren-dered their contribution to peace-build-ing problematic: the ambivalence felt bymany about their relationship with thestate, the limits to the power they havetraditionally wielded, and the lack of anyagreement—as, indeed, within manyother sectors—about the nature of the


conflict or approaches to it.There have been honourable groups

who have attempted—often under con-ditions of great danger—to ensure co-op-eration and dialogue between thedifferent factions. But this ambivalence,and these differences, have meant thatby and large NGOs have been unable, in-deed unwilling, even to discuss what con-structive approaches to peace-buildingmight be—let alone agree to implementthem.

This is not surprising: far from hav-ing kept themselves ‘pure’ from the dis-criminatory and exclusive practices ofother sectors, many NGOs in Northern Ire-land—particularly some of the most re-spected and long established—are almostas burdened with exclusivity, exemplifiedthrough imbalances in staff and clientele,as many commercial concerns. This isapparent in symbols used, holiday cus-toms, and choice of venues or patrons, allof which serve to sustain exclusion.

Many of these difficulties came to ahead in the approach of the voluntarysector to the EU Special Support Pro-gramme for Peace and Reconciliation,introduced in 1995, whose moneys weresupposed to be directly related to peace-building on the ground. Discussionsaround how best to use the funds showedthat very few NGOs were agreed on howto build peace—indeed very few people

were willing to give a lead in ensuringthat communities openly talked throughthe issue. It is only now, three years later,with the EU’s insistence that peace-build-ing be integral to expenditure of the sec-ond tranche of the ‘peace package’, thatsome groups are finally—in many cases,very reluctantly—beginning specificallyto address the problem.

External, including international,NGOs have also not been without theirdifficulties. Some—I would commend theQuakers and the Mennonites—haveachieved significant credibility. Similarly,some funders—notably the Rowntreetrusts, again Quaker-based—have takena very wise and sophisticated approachto hastening an end to the conflict. Butothers have had major problems achiev-ing cross-community credibility and,despite the visits of hundreds of interna-tional academic and conflict-relateddelegations, only a handful will be re-membered as having contributed signifi-cantly to that goal—indeed, someexternal interventions have been noth-ing short of disastrous.

Our knowledge of the processes of con-flict remains limited: the dubious excite-ments of war-making continue to capturemore research and other resources thanthe long-term challenges of conflict pre-vention and resolution. But critical workis increasingly being undertaken: that of


Direct Intervention Capacity building Advocacy

Fuelling Conflict aid used to providing support to advocacy forpurchase arms political fronts warring party

Holding Operation ‘smart’ relief, ie does support local protection ofnot increase tension development organisations civilian rights

Peace-building ethnic groups brought support for civic advocacy for peace,together to develop peace groups justice, reconciliationco-operative programmes

Goodhand and Hulme at ManchesterUniversity offers a very useful startingpoint for NGOs in conflict situations.9 Thematrix above is a variation on their clas-sification of NGO strategies and impact.

The last of these categories—peace-building—is probably the most interest-ing. It is here—in the lulls between thefighting or after the fighting has eased—that the work of NGOs will meet in somesignificant way the new demands of theworld for a rewriting of global and localcivic processes, for a reinvention of poli-tics and power. If power is indeed mov-ing both towards the global (in some casesvia the regional) and the local, then thecompetencies and roles of governmentare themselves in transition. This offersmajor opportunities for willing NGOs, withexpertise and strategic skills, to informand influence governmental policies.

For example, many British NGOs—par-ticularly those active in development—

have been working closely with the La-bour party for some time to help shapeits policies. It is a salutary experiencenow to observe Foreign and Common-wealth Office and Department forInternational Development personnelcollaborating with such organisations asSaferworld and Oxfam—a sight thatwould have been most unusual five yearsago.

So who is learning from whom—gov-ernment or NGOs? Obviously, it would bepolitic to suggest both—and equally. But,culturally, the world is moving towardsthe less hierarchically inclined processesof the NGOs. Their capacity for network-ing and breaking through international,and indeed ethnic, boundaries is increas-ingly being appreciated by those involvedin more formal, closed, often secretive or-ganisations. The emerging science ofpeace-making (as opposed to war-mak-ing) has developed primarily amongst


NGOs and intellectuals, but its theory andskills are increasingly being taken up—with some avidity—by military men anddiplomats alike. In Northern Ireland,models for dialogue and mediation, or forinstitutional audit, developed within thevoluntary sector, are being increasinglyadopted in the domains of business andsecurity.

It has been fascinating how, in theprior absence of regional democratic ad-ministration in Northern Ireland, manyof the barriers between government andcivil society have been broken down, witheach side gradually learning that per-haps it could come to trust the other, evenwhen dealing with some of the mostconflictual issues. Such trust is also ech-oed in some of the partnership arrange-ments for delivery of government and EU

programmes—particularly at districtcouncil level, where consortia encompass-ing politicians, trade unions, businessesand the voluntary sector are sitting onlocal decision-making committees in away that, again, would have been impos-sible a few years ago.

Interesting in this context was therecent suggestion by the Women’s Coali-tion that any new political assembly forNorthern Ireland should be supple-mented by a second-tier body, in whichthe business, academic, trade union andvoluntary sectors could provide construc-

tive and formal input into the democraticprocess. Although there were many poli-ticians who looked upon this idea withsuspicion [and it was eventually trans-lated into an advisory forum—ed], suchnew forms of power reflect national andinternational trends in which issue-basedgroups are becoming increasingly impor-tant in shaping local and global agendas.

The story is very far from universallypositive, of course, and the way ahead forNGOS is far from clear. While they mayinfluence the thinking of an increasingnumber of governments and interna-tional security bodies, such positive alli-ances will only be possible in certaincircumstances. In others, governmentswill continue to try to seduce and useNGOS for their own ends, or to impose po-litical constraints on their idealism.

But the millennium will see a gradualcoming of age for many NGOS. The time isnow extraordinarily opportune to developpositive agendas, to refine and refocusthem, to move with increasing confidenceand capacity into a world increasingly oftheir making. As Ignatieff puts it, “Thearmy of aid workers and activists whomediate between the zones of our worldcontinues to grow in strength and influ-ence. They remain our moral alibi, butthey are also the means through whichdeeper and more permanent commit-ments can be made in the future.”10


Discussion

Harald Bungarten of NATO opened thediscussion by recalling how as one of the‘’68 generation’ he had taken part in dem-onstrations against things his parentshad stood for. Now he found himself hav-ing to respond to a demonstration inBrussels demanding intervention inKosovo. And far from this being a dem-onstration against something, the dem-onstrators had chanted ‘Long live NATO!’

He said how the mid-conference bustour for participants around Belfast hadsent shivers down his back, the ‘peacelines’ reminding him of Berlin. The Wall’sdemise there had changed the atmos-phere dramatically in NATO headquarters.Nowadays the only uniforms in Brusselstended to be worn by eastern Europeanvisitors; for the rest, civilian clothing re-flected the increasingly civil-political roleNATO was playing.

Partnership for Peace had been veryimportant for NATO but the organisationstill needed to redefine its ‘strategic con-cept’ as to what threats now had to befaced. The new role was to provide secu-rity in the broadest sense, to establishan environment in which others—whether they be the UN or domesticNGOs—could do their work: “If the bridgesare mined or destroyed, you can’t bringpeople together.”

As to the role of NGOs, he stressed thatintergovernmental organisations like hisown could be even more remote than gov-ernments. But, as he saw it, “co-ordinatedco-operation with policy-makers” was theway ahead.

As discussion broadened, it waspointed out that NGOs did not in a simplesense ‘represent’ the entire grassrootspopulation. Indeed it was much easier forgovernments, or IGOs, to bring smallgroups together via NGOs than to reachthe majority of the people (a difficultyoften highlighted by politicians keen todismiss NGOs as ‘unrepresentative’).

Problems could also arise if NGOs weremuch more developed in one communitythan another. Nor did they necessarilyagree—sometimes the role of politicianswas precisely to balance the differentviews they heard represented to them.

NGOs also needed to liaise better be-tween themselves. They often got in eachother’s way and did not achieve the‘synergistic effects’ they could through co-operation.

One way forward was a charter forNGOs in conflict situations. Thus, every-one knew what to expect of the Red Cross,but other organisations did not al-ways know what NGOs saw themselves asdoing.

A particular problem had arisen inNorthern Ireland with NGO beneficiaries


DD

of the EU Special Support Programme.Evaluation of the programme had re-vealed that many groups had not builtany serious commitment to reconciliationinto the work that had been supported.Hence the European Commission hadstipulated that eligibility for the secondtranche of the ‘peace package’ would re-quire reconciliation to be foregrounded.

The more general lesson was thatNGOs were required to work to a clearmission with a defined modus operandi,to think strategically and to improvetheir co-ordination.

Footnotes1 Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes: The ShortTwentieth Century, Michael Joseph, London,19942 Ulrich Beck, The Reinvention of Politics, Pol-ity Press, Cambridge, 19973 John Naisbett, Global Paradox, Allen & Unwin,London, 19964 James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a YoungMan, 19165 Michael Ignatieff, Warrior’s Honour: EthnicWar and the Modern Consciousness, Chatto,London, 19986 P Stubbs, ‘The role of NGOs in social reconstruc-tion in post-Yugoslav countries’, Relief and Re-habilitation Network, May 19977 E Eagen, ‘Relief and rehabilitation work inMozambique’, Development in Practice, no 3,19918 Mary Anderson, Do No Harm: Supporting Lo-cal Capacities for Peace through Aid, Collabora-tion for Development Action, 19969 J Goodhand and D Hulme, NGOs and ComplexEmergencies, University of Manchester/INTRAC

working paper no 110 Ignatieff, op cit


Robin Wilson

T he words ‘peace and reconciliation’have often been bracketed togetherrather glibly in Northern Ireland. Yet

this publication began by pointing to the1990s reality across Europe that peacehas often been premised on ethnic sepa-ration, rather than on the constructionof new relationships of comity betweenindividuals and groups.

This point was forcefully underscoredin discussion at the Europa of the Bel-gian intercommunal relationship—how itoperated on the assumption that ‘goodfences make good neighbours’. Reconcili-ation, by contrast, implies that those whohave formerly lived apart in relationshipsof mutual suspicion will henceforth sharein constructing, and then inhabiting, acommon home—building trust along theway.

It is thankfully becoming safe oncemore to use the word ‘ethical’ in politics

without being sniggered at, and clearlythe moral choice is in favour of the sec-ond approach. A genuinely civil societyrequires no less. In any event, as indi-cated earlier, in Northern Ireland at leastthere is no alternative.

But it is a tremendous challenge. Con-trast the entirely non-violent and mutu-ally supported unification of Germany inthe aftermath of the fall of the Wall. Eventhere, divisions between Ossis and Wessisremained, and remain, deep long after.Five years on, one (western) journalistlikened it to “sharing a bathroom with astranger”.1

In constructing a new internationalorder, therefore, which can realise thisambition, what is needed is:(a) a consensus that this is indeed thedirection in which the international or-der can and should go;(b) a clear vision, which can be sharedacross the international community, ofwhat this entails in terms of new norms;

Framing the architecture


and(c) the development, plan by plan, andthen brick by brick, of the architectureto guarantee security and human rights,an architecture which makes co-existencepossible.

Some of the pieces of the architecturehave already been put in place in thisdecade—the Council of Europe frame-work convention being an obvious one.The three-day Europa discussion con-cluded by putting more flesh on theseskeletal bones.

One issue was a need for greater clar-ity about the role of NGOs, some kindof codification. A charter was thus

felt to be a good idea. There could be morestandard-setting, discouraging the temp-tation of all new NGOs to start fromscratch. And it was suggested that NGOscould enjoy a recognised status—a kindof ‘press card’—in conflict zones.

While the professionalisation of NGOswas generally to be welcomed, the per-ceived downside was a loss of the origi-nal connection to a voluntary, subscriberbase. That could leave out the ordinarycitizen and engender a loss of independ-ence vis-à-vis government funders. Clearvalues and principles were thus required.

NGOs were inherently diverse, ofcourse, and this needed to be recognisedby intergovernmental organisations. By

the same token, however, NGOs had torecognise their interdependence. Interna-tional NGOs could play a leavening role inweakening the particularism and sectari-anism sometimes characteristic of localsocial movements. Put another way, theycould provide a language of tolerance insupport of NGOs facing intolerance athome. The fact remained, of course, thatsome domestic NGOs played a partisan,rather than a peaceful, role.

But if it was necessary to recognisethe diversity of NGOs, it was also impor-tant to recognise that conflicts underwentdifferent phases—in which NGOs had agreater or lesser role to play. In the ‘to-tal’ phase, it was a matter solely of peace-keeping by regional or internationalforces; as violence diminished, both NGOsand IGOs could assist with emergency aidand assistance; it was after ceasefires,when the task was increasingly reconcili-ation and reconstruction, that NGOs couldcome into their own, providing what wasdescribed as an “underpinning for demo-cratic control”.

But this was equally true before con-flicts developed—or, hopefully, didn’t. Inparticular, NGOs could do three things:• provide early warning of conflicts,whereas states and IGOs tended to reactonly when matters were already tooserious;• engage in preventative measures, the


menu of options available when a par-ticular situation was deteriorating; and• work proactively, at all times, promot-ing the positive side of a global commu-nity which ethnic protagonists presentedas a threat.

In that sense, NGOs did not so muchneed to develop as such as to developtheir interrelationships. They were thebasis of a social fabric, an internationalcivil society appropriate to a complexworld.

Sub-state structures could also playa role in this emergent order. The Assem-bly of European Regions, for example,had been instrumental in establishingthe Committee of the Regions of the EU

and the Congress of Local and RegionalAuthorities. But there was now some fa-tigue within the organisation, which hada pan-European reach. Perhaps it couldfind a new role in assisting this architec-tural work.

As for IGOs, it was recognised that theytended to jump from crisis to crisis, oftenintervening too late—Kosovo providinga contemporary example where everyonewas waiting for something to happen.They should avail themselves moreeffectively of the sensitivity of NGOs toemergent conflicts through opening uptheir recruitment and promotion to NGO

personnel.But short-termism was a larger

problem. For a small organisation likethe Council of Europe, there was an ob-vious tendency to launch into conflictsituations to make its presence felt. Eventhough it was clearly better to spend$10,000 to forestall a conflict than beforced to spend $10 million two yearsdown the line to pick up the pieces,funders—and IGOs—tended to focus onthe ‘sexy’ issue of the day.

The problem was compounded by deepuncertainty about future roles in a cli-mate where many old landmarks hadgone. As the OSCE representative put it,“We have not yet found a new way of do-ing things.” The representative of theCouncil of Europe reported that a ‘com-mittee of wise persons’ was reflecting onthat organisation’s future.

But some elements of the IGO archi-tecture were clear. Thus, for example,there was an understanding between theCouncil of Europe and the OSCE on con-flicts involving minorities. The formerwas in effect the ‘department of safe hous-ing’, ensuring safeguards existed to pre-vent conflicts; the latter was the ‘firebrigade’, with the high commissioner onnational minorities stepping in as a cri-sis-intervention mechanism to dousethem. This underscored the need for thecouncil to take a longer view.

Clearly, the council’s ‘niche’ was hu-man rights. Indeed, it was suggested the


council had been key in placing humanrights “at the centre of the Europeanethos”. It had a mechanism for imple-menting existing standards (the Stras-bourg commission and court) and a rolein developing new concepts of rights.

It could explore further, it was sug-gested, the potential for sending specialrapporteurs to investigate situationswhere there were warning signs of con-flict—a breach in conventional notions ofsovereignty which only in Europe mightbe deemed acceptable. The Finnish ideaof a high commissioner for human rightswas already under consideration, thoughsome council members would prefer a‘low commissioner’—it would have to bea properly resourced office to be effective.

A key issue in the evolving IGO archi-tecture was NATO, whose representativewas keen to stress that it cost its mem-ber citizens less than the cost of a packetof cigarettes a year. He claimed its en-largement was demand-led, rather thanexpansionist—indeed there was some-thing of a ‘golf-club’ attitude amongstsome members: why do we need newones?

As to NATO’s role, what was previously‘clear’ was now ‘blurred’, since—this sar-donically—“the glorious days of the coldwar unfortunately are over”. As it ex-panded, it could not become another OSCE,but nor could it become the ‘global police

force’ the US seemed to want. Yet, equally,any idea of a UN army had to be ruledout, as this would be like the old FrenchForeign Legion writ large.

There was also a need to avoid creat-ing new boundaries in Europe, and thehope was that through Partnership forPeace there could be closer relations withRussia and the Ukraine. In other words,‘security’ would have to come to mean notstrength and secrecy, but co-operationand transparency. NATO’s role could alsoenlarge in a different sense—into newareas of work. Thus, for example, prob-lems of terrorism were unlikely to goaway.

By contrast, the UN was in effect hav-ing to narrow its peace-keeping interests,given member states’ reluctance to enterinto new commitments. But documentslike Agenda for Development and Agendafor Peace had identified the intellectualcontinuum from peace-keeping (keepingthe sides apart) through peace-making(facilitating political deals) to peace-building (developing civil society). Andthere had been substantial practical ad-vances in dealing with this continuum interms of different phases of conflicts.

The UN also had considerable experi-ence from elsewhere in terms of develop-ing networks and coalitions with andamong NGOs and relationships with gov-ernments: the World Conference on


DD

Women in Beijing had been a prime ex-ample. This methodology could be trans-ferred to conflict situations, at a regionalor international level depending on theparticular conflict.

F or two centuries, the enlightenmentheld out the hope of a universal civi-lisation—whether encapsulated in

the Rights of Man or the Dictatorship ofthe Proletariat.

Nineteen eighty-nine encapsulatedthe collapse of that enlightenmentproject. But underlying that collapse wasa paradoxically global trend towards newparticularisms, increasingly clashingwith each other in a less deferentialworld. Hence the growth of ethnic andnational conflicts.

We now all inhabit, therefore, a lesssecure order in which fear is a spur toconflict itself—fear of oppression, fear ofabandonment, fear of loss of identity, feareven of massive communal loss of life.

Hence the focus of the Europa round-table on what potential there was for anew order to emerge, in Europe at least,which could guarantee security and hu-man rights—in Kosovo, Cyprus, North-ern Ireland or wherever.

The round-table did not set down de-tailed blueprints, but it painted an im-pressionist picture of this emergentorder and clarified, to change the

metaphor, at least some of its building-blocks. With the crisis of traditional ide-ologies, these are the great humanquestions of our time.

Footnotes1 ‘The eagle’s embrace’, Economist, September

30th 1995


Robin Wilson

There is a well-known drinks adver-tisement, set in a bar during a quiz,which says: ‘That night there were

more questions than answers.’ And plentyof questions for Northern Ireland arisefrom the Europa discussion.

What lessons can it learn from the in-ternational experience of all those—inNGOs, IGOs or governments—who havesought to swim against the tide of ethnicdivision in the 1990s? Where does North-ern Ireland fit into the evolving architec-ture of security and human rights whichthe round-table charted? How does thesubsequent Belfast agreement match upto international norms? And what tasksnow follow it, in building reconciliationas well as peace?

But many answers also emerged fromthe round-table, which can assist the ef-forts of the region’s peace-builders—andthose outside who continue to show good-

will towards it—in the months and yearsahead. Yet first let us ask what relevancecentral and eastern European experi-ences may have for Northern Ireland?And here Rogers Brubaker has provideda fascinating validation of what are in-tuitively attractive comparisons.

Brubaker has developed an originalanalysis of nationality conflicts in thenew Europe, which sets them in the con-text of a ‘triadic configuration’.1 He es-tablishes through investigation ofnumerous cases how what is at the heartof the most intractable problems is a ‘re-lational field’ with three components—each themselves a field of diverseelements. These fields were to mark thethen new states issuing from the collapseof the Austro-Hungarian and Tsaristempires in the wake of the first worldwar—at the same time as the war of in-dependence in Ireland led to the newquasi-state of Northern Ireland.

These three components are a ‘nation-

Placing Northern Ireland


alising state’ which a new ruling major-ity tries to craft in its own image, a ‘na-tional minority’ which in reaction seeksequal recognition, and the ‘homeland na-tionalism’ of a neighbouring state whichsupports the national minority. The po-tency of this is negatively evidenced inwestern Europe by the Belgian case,where the first two elements have his-torically been central: the Walloon-domi-nated ‘nationalising state’ facing anincreasingly militant Flemish ‘nationalminority’. As the Europa discussion iden-tified, it has been the absence of only thelast component, in terms of the attitudesof France and the Netherlands, whichhas ensured the intercommunal conflictnever became violent.

Translated to Northern Ireland, the‘nationalising state’ becomes NorthernIreland under Unionist rule, the ‘nationalminority’ the consequently disaffectednorthern Catholics and the ‘homelandnationalism’ the republic’s (for the mostpart ineffectual) efforts to end partition.Why the Northern Ireland conflict alwaysreverts to the 1920-22 settlement is per-haps thus more readily apparent.

As is why it has proved so fiendishlydifficult hitherto, even though the sub-stantive grievances are (say, by South Af-rican standards) relatively modest. Forit has been compounded by the fact that,from another angle, the Free State was

a ‘nationalising’ one, northern Protes-tants the ‘national minority’ and GreatBritain a decidedly reluctant ‘homeland’desirous principally of minimising in-volvement.

Having established the validity of dis-cussing Northern Ireland in this broadercontext, let us revisit the five themes ofthe Europa discussion, with the concreteimplications for Northern Ireland solelyin mind.

T he tension between equality andidentity has been at the heart of theNorthern Ireland conflict; hitherto

progress towards equality, going back toCatholic emancipation in 1829, has beenmarked by sustained, even exacerbated,division along the faultlines of commu-nal identity. An obvious example has beenthe virtual disappearance during the‘troubles’ of the Protestant minority(around one in five according to 60s poll-ing evidence) defining itself as ‘Irish’.

Indeed, some on both sides have seenthis as an unfortunate but inevitable by-product of the ‘republican struggle’—evenif it contradicts the latter’s desideratum,in this bicentennial year, of ‘the unity ofCatholic, Protestant and Dissenter’. De-mands to end the ‘unionist veto’ have ineffect been a counsel of despair that anysignificant section of the Protestant com-munity can depart from what is held to


be a reactionary defence of privilege, how-ever marginal. Such pessimistic assump-tions have only been encouraged andreinforced by a unionist tendency to seein all demands for equality since the civilrights movement a larger plot to over-throw the state.

Ways out of this conundrum emerged,however, from the round-table. The firstwas mundane, but none the less impor-tant. The experience of UNTAES in easternSlavonia, which had sought to achievefair treatment for the Serbian minorityin the area, had demonstrated how prac-tical co-operation on projects of largerpublic interest—as basic in that case asa common postal system—could helpundermine intercommunal mistrust.

Of course, the hope has to be that col-laboration in the new Assembly estab-lished by the agreement will have thateffect when the broader public can seetangible win-win benefits emerging forall. These are small steps, but potentiallycumulative and irreversible. This couldbe encapsulated in a wider concept of in-terdependence, which it was argued pro-vided a countervailing dynamic topolarisation. The North-South Ministe-rial Council foreshadowed in the agree-ment, with its implementationbodies—however modest—in specific ar-eas, has the potential to translate thison to an all-Ireland stage.2

The eastern Slavonia experienceshowed how it was much harder toachieve co-operation in the cultural do-main—education, for example—but hereit was suggested that promotion of free-dom of individual identity choice wasimportant as an alternative to sectariancommunal mobilisations. Recognising,however, the compelling appeal of nation-alist identifications, it was suggested thatcreative cultural activity had a crucialrole to play here, playing as this did withthe possibilities of cultural ‘hybridity’.What, after all, is so compellingly ‘funny’(and so apparently non-threatening)about the anti-sectarian humour of theHole in the Wall Gang or Patrick Kielty?

International conventions could alsobe brought to bear here: the Council ofEurope’s framework convention, for ex-ample, ratified by the UK3 and—as a re-sult of the agreement—shortly by therepublic4 makes explicit the right of in-dividuals to choose not to be defined byan assumed communal affiliation.

Taking these two points together, it isworth remarking that the recentlyrelaunched Community Relations Coun-cil contains in its new logo the triple slo-gan equity-diversity-interdependence.That slogan neatly encapsulates the na-ture of the challenge. A minister for cul-ture should surely be designated in theAssembly Executive Committee, given


the luxury of having 12 seats to allocate.Further avenues for progress were

identified in the international domain.Firstly, codification in conventions ofrights attaching to members of minori-ties provide an international norm (if notyet an international court) which can becalled in aid. Thus, for example, the pro-visions in the Council of Europe Charterfor Regional or Minority Languages areused to back the provisions in the agree-ment on the Irish language.5

But not only can such norms be drawnupon: they can be presented as an objec-tive international standard—rather thanrights being set only in the context of awin-lose Northern Ireland argument—and so can potentially defuse otherwisehighly charged issues. Here, the HumanRights Commission envisaged in theagreement will have an important pub-lic educational role to play.

A striking feature of the frameworkconvention, for example, is how, by fa-vouring agreements between statesabout minorities it undermines the ideaof exclusive state sovereignty and opensthe door to a droit d’ingérence on the partof states concerned about ‘their’ minori-ties across their borders. Nevertheless,it equally does not support territorialclaims by ‘homeland nationalist’ states,a factor undermining the legitimacy ofthe Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985.

The new British-Irish Intergovern-mental Conference envisaged in the Bel-fast agreement, while it will provide acontinuing forum for intercession by therepublic’s government with Britain overNorthern Ireland concerns outside thecompetence of the Assembly—particu-larly as these bear down on the Catholiccommunity—will thus be more legiti-mately based than hitherto, given the as-sociated amendment of articles 2 and 3of the republic’s constitution.6

The Anglo-Irish Agreement also failedto recognise any tension between individual and collective rights, the

latter in fact being assumed to dominatein its presentation of identities in entirelycommunal terms.7 Yet the unionist as-sumption, best embodied by RobertMcCartney, that only rights attach-ing abstractly to individuals—such asthose in the European Convention ofHuman Rights—are permissible isequally problematic.8

The problem with this latter view isthat it fails to recognise that identity at-taches itself to symbols with affectivepower. So even institutional involvementof minority groups—‘power-sharing’—isnot enough. There must also be a sym-bolic recognition of those particular iden-tities in which individuals freely chooseto invest—‘parity of esteem’. Key is to


The loneliness of the long-distance chair

ensure that members of particular com-munities do not experience a sense ofhaving been, or of being, inserted into arelationship of subordination to others.

It is not so much, therefore that thereare such things as collective rights (thereare not, in the sense of communal rights,in international conventions). It is thatindividuals feel not only they should en-joy rights but also that a community towhich they feel affiliated should enjoysecurity. The shorthand for the Catholicexperience of Northern Ireland since par-tition—the ‘nationalist nightmare’—en-capsulates this sense of insecurity whichhas bound individual Catholics togetherin communal solidarity during the inter-

vening decades.So how can the interrelationships be-

tween communities be so managed as toensure mutual security? The descent ofYugoslavia into war clearly shows how itshould not be done, and, closer to home,the uphill battle which has faced the Pa-rades Commission provides anothernegative example. For the evident dan-ger of symbolic recognition (as against a‘neutral’ state) is not only the exclusionof other group definitions than thosearound the communal divide but also thethreat that the space for symbolic expres-sion will be filled in an aggressive waywhich encourages essentialist andadversarial self-perceptions.

An important idea which emerged indiscussion was the need for ‘transcend-ent symbolism’, so that counterposedcommunal symbols did not monopolisethe public domain. An obvious examplein Northern Ireland would be a Stormontequivalent of the handshake on the WhiteHouse lawn between Yasser Arafat andYitzhak Rabin, in front of the world’smedia, in the wake of the Oslo accordson the middle east. Notable after theGood Friday agreement was finally de-livered was how all the parties separatelyemerged to give their ‘spin’ to the pressand TV—a separation which was sus-tained into the referendum campaign andwhich contrasted sharply with the cross-


party unity of the ‘No’ camp.When the Assembly is elected, and the

first minister and deputy first ministersignalled in the agreement in turn ap-pointed, there will once more be photo-opportunities for such public handshakesat Stormont to signal a new partnershipcementing the communities together. Thecathartic potential of such small eventsshould not be underestimated.

There was a realistic recognition, how-ever, at the Europa that there would bea continuing need for external interven-tion, given continuing internal divisions,even in a peaceful climate. Such inter-ventions need to be handled carefully inNorthern Ireland, so as not to convey ei-ther a hidden joint authority or a patron-ising paternalism. And the Belfastagreement is an inherently democraticagreement, which locates sovereigntyvery much with the people of NorthernIreland—as subsidiarity demands.

But there are major problems ahead,at the time of writing, such as the con-tinuing impasse over decommissioning ofparamilitary weapons. This is set to cometo a head when the executive committeeanticipated in the agreement is to be es-tablished,9 inevitably including SinnFéin members yet with the IRA having setits face against compliance with thedecommissioning section of the deal.10 Onthe other hand, the commission on polic-

ing, with its international element, is arecognition that external input will beneeded to arrive at policing arrange-ments which can command cross-commu-nal support.11

In these areas, it is in practice highlylikely that the British-Irish Intergovern-mental Conference will indeed be re-quired, as the agreement signals, to have‘regular and frequent’ meetings aboutissues such as these not devolved to theAssembly.12

Related questions arise in reconcilingpluralism and common life. Bel-gium has ‘succeeded’ in achieving

this through a system amounting tonever-ending negotiation between repre-sentatives of its ‘two communities’, towhich both sides are committed; institu-tional arrangements, such as 50-50power-sharing irrespective of the precisecommunal balance; and acceptance of the‘pillarisation’ of not only politics but alsocivil society.

The positive implications of this forNorthern Ireland are evident enough.Northern Ireland’s conflict will never be‘over’, even when its violent expressionis, and intercommunal (re)negotiationwill thus remain an ever-present require-ment. The Belfast agreement provides fora review four years on by the parties andgovernments.13 Also implied is a recog-


nition that democratic arrangementsneed not imply ‘majority rule’, since bothcommunities need to buy into any initia-tives. Again, here the agreement providesfor core or controversial decisions to betaken by ‘parallel consent’ of representa-tives of a majority of each community orby weighted majority overall.14

But that uncertainty as to which isthe better safeguard reflects the realdownside of the Belgian approach, givenits rigidity, its inability to deal with ‘new’issues and the associated segregationwithin civil society. The weighted-major-ity idea reflects a sense of the risks asso-ciated with ‘parallel consent’, ofinstitutionalising sectarian division andmarginalising non- or anti-sectariangroups in the Assembly.

It is also striking that these lattergroups succeeded in inserting into theagreement encouragement of integratededucation and mixed housing. This com-mitment to a genuine civil society, ratherthan pillarisation, is clearly a long-termeffort, and for the first time the agree-ment gives official recognition to the ef-forts of many NGOs working in the arenaof reconciliation for decades. It is impor-tant this work receives the resources itdeserves, including after the EU SpecialSupport Programme has expired.15

But political leadership will also be ata premium, as the further counter-exam-

ple of Czechoslovakia demonstrates.There, despite a civil society largely fa-vouring Czech-Slovak co-existence, politi-cal leaders with much more adversarialagendas were able to win out and forcethe ‘velvet divorce’.

A further concern about following theBelgian approach is the way the lattermarginalises groups outside the ‘twocommunities’. This would be unconscion-able for Northern Ireland in the light ofthe progress in recent years towards rec-ognising that its multi-ethnic rainbowhas more colours than orange and green.The introduction of the Race RelationsOrder and the associated establishmentof the Commission for Racial Equality—following the increasing assertiveness ofethnic minorities through NGOs like theNorthern Ireland Council for Ethnic Mi-norities—are testament to that.

Underlying the intercommunal divi-sion in Northern Ireland has, ofcourse, been the clash between (Brit-

ish) sovereignty and (Irish) self-deter-mination. The survey of the evolutionof the concept of self-determination byAdrian Guelke in this volume shows thatthe former ‘anathema against secession’has gone but the changing of borders byforce remains anathema. Thus a decisionby a majority within Northern Ireland infavour of secession (and integration with


the republic) would be legitimate withininternational law, whereas the IRA cam-paign to force such an outcome was not.

The agreement reflects this approachin as much as it reaffirms that NorthernIreland is in effect a state-within-a-state,in which a majority can peacefully decideto secede or not to do so. This provisionis underscored by reform of articles 2 and3—the claim these contained, in anyevent, had no international legal stand-ing16 —to bring them into line with theNorthern Ireland Constitution Act of1973, in which the majority-consent prin-ciple was first espoused. Thus in a sensethe ending of the anathema against se-cession as such but retention of theanathema against secession by any otherthan electoral means legitimates bothconstitutional nationalist and unionistpositions.

And whereas the evolving self-deter-mination norm has nothing to say on theissue thereby raised of minorities withinstates, the agreement both establishes araft of rights protections in Northern Ire-land and the harmonising proposals itcontains vis-à-vis the republic imply thenotion that the rights of the Protestantminority in a united Ireland would besimilarly protected.17

The clear difficulty with this, ofcourse, is evident once the mechanisminvolved is considered. The agreement

specifies that the Northern Ireland sec-retary will hold a border plebiscite if heor she anticipates a likely majority infavour of a united Ireland. But the run-up to such an eventuality is likely to beassociated with high and escalating ten-sion and communal polarisation, withcentre voters not only lacking a constitu-tional option but coming under intensepressure to support ‘their’ side in the faceof mobilisation by the ‘other’. Outbreaksof violence at interfaces, possibly withserious paramilitary manifestations andfurther forced population movements,would be probable. Amongst Protestantsin particular, communal insecurity wouldbe profound.

This is of course the worst possiblebasis for a benign transition to a unitedIreland, which would lack legitimacywithin the Protestant community be-cause it had been carried by a Catholic-dominated majority, just as the status quohas always lacked legitimacy amongstCatholics because partition representedthe ultimate gerrymander. And just,therefore, as it has widely been seen ascrucial that the referendum on the agree-ment should be passed by a massive ma-jority, 50 per cent plus one seems a shakybasis for an even greater constitutionaltransformation.

In fact, contrary to IRA briefings abouta united Ireland in ‘10 to 15 years’ conse-


quent upon an agreement,18 an apparentslowing in demographic trends in favourof the Catholic community and the con-tinued existence of a substantial body ofnon-nationalist Catholic opinion meanany such eventuality is a long way off.Asked in a post-agreement poll how theywould vote in a referendum on the con-stitutional status of Northern Ireland, 60per cent favoured the union, 27 per centbacked a united Ireland and 13 per centdid not know or gave no opinion.19 Thecomment by the prime minister, TonyBlair, in his speech in Belfast shortly af-ter his election that even the youngestperson in the room would not see a unitedIreland is likely to be nearer the mark.

But if borders clearly cannot bechanged by coercion, more positive point-ers for Northern Ireland come from theerosion of the idea that they are imper-meable. While European integration willnot ‘solve’ the Northern Ireland problem,it does legitimise the transfrontier ar-rangements in the agreement, which fol-low a Council of Ministers model. But, inthe first instance at least, it also directsthese towards pragmatic and practical,coal-and-steel areas. It is difficult to rep-resent co-operation in tackling animalhealth or social security fraud as the sin-ister construction of an all-Ireland ‘su-per-state’, particularly given the collapseof utopian federalism at a European level.

Yet at the same time such permeabil-ity makes it possible for ‘national minori-ties’ like the Catholic community inNorthern Ireland to feel much more partof the ‘homeland’ than would otherwisebe possible—and certainly not to feeltrapped in a ‘nationalising state’. Hencethe overwhelmingly positive Catholic re-action to the agreement, as against theuneasiness among many Protestants atthe erosion of old certitudes.

R econciling small ‘p’ and big ‘p’ po-litical agendas comprised the last,but by no means the least, of the five

Europa themes. And perhaps one placeto start is modesty. It has after all beenNGOs—the ‘loyal orders’ and the ‘residents’groups’ who have prosecuted the paradescontroversy in Northern Ireland. So thisis not a case of NGOs good, politicians bad.

At the same time, politicians who de-fine politics as a monopoly of those withan electoral mandate have only seenthreats in the growing NGO influence withgovernment and IGOs in Northern Irelandin recent years—as evidenced by the ten-sions over the EU ‘peace package’. Andthere has been a legitimate fear withinsections of civil society that NGOs wouldbe carved out of any new arrangements.

On both sides, arguments which oughtto be about inherent tendencies becomereduced to personalities. Sustained con-


flict along a single political axis has twoenervating effects on the political class:it narrows their field of vision and it nar-rows their repertoire of policy responses.It also tends to lock them into adversarialways of behaving. Civil society will of itsdiverse nature contain a much broaderspectrum of concerns (including manyunsavoury ones) and throw up more crea-tive talents (as well as many destructiveelements). The gap between the two leadsto the alienation evident in Belgium butalso apparent in Northern Ireland.

The positive way to address this gapis for the constructive forces within civilsociety to ensure ‘new’ issues with whichpoliticians are inexperienced—in North-ern Ireland, social exclusion, for exam-ple—are placed firmly on the politicalagenda. The goal is ‘co-ordinated co-op-eration with policy-makers’, which in thecontext of the agreement will of coursenow include elected representatives forthe first time in a quarter-century.

Northern Ireland’s ‘democratic deficit’can only adequately be filled if its ‘policydeficit’20 is simultaneously addressed:otherwise, it is highly likely that busi-ness-as-usual will pertain and the demo-cratic opportunity for policy innovationsquandered. It is here that NGOs have aparticular input to make.

It is clear, however, that NGOs do haveto think more strategically and to co-op-

erate better: again, they are by no meansimmune to the trust deficit by which allsuch conflict situations are characterisedat the political level.

Here, the Civic Forum proposed in theagreement has considerable innovativepotential, bringing together as it willbusiness, the trade unions and the vol-untary sector (and, presumably, the farm-ers). These represent the mostconstructive, and informed, civil-societyvoices, with considerable experience ofinformal ‘social partnership’ already. Theforum is to advise the Assembly and if itis to have any significant impact will haveto deliver united ‘opinions’ to the latter,in the manner of consultative EU bodies.It will also need a right of initiative—sothat it doesn’t have to wait for its opin-ion to be asked. And it will need to havethe resources to do its job properly.

The relevant clause in the agreementbetrays a compromise between the desirefor such input—the original proposal,from the Women’s Coalition, was for afully fledged second chamber—and thepoliticians’ desire for control. Thus ad-ministrative support and selection crite-ria are to be in the hands of the firstminister and deputy first minister.21 Itwill be important that the latter resistthe inclination to ensure the forum is acompliant poodle.

Where politicians do have a key role,


DD

however, is in balancing the still inevita-bly conflicting demands on governmentfrom a range of diverse NGOs. The paradescontroversy, including the establishmentof the Parades Commission, has in asense reflected a failure of politics in thisregard, so often perceived as a microcosmfor the Northern Ireland conflict as awhole. Via the new Assembly, the task ofelected representatives will be to meetthat challenge—and to demonstrate thatpolitics in Northern Ireland can succeed.

In Northern Ireland, the very phrases‘security’ and ‘human rights’ havethemselves been unhelpfully counter-

posed, as respectively ‘unionist’ and ‘na-tionalist’ concerns. What the Europadiscussion highlighted is that they are infact two sides of the same coin—that, forexample, the claim of human rights foreither ‘side’ in the conflict is often a claimfor communal security.

The hope attached to the Belfastagreement is that it achieves just thisobjective, of offering security and humanrights to all, in a manner consistent withinternational norms. As this concludingsection has demonstrated, the agreementstands up well against such objectivenorms, which bodes well for its stability.It chimes with the emergent interna-tional order and has the capacity, at longlast, to allow Northern Ireland to hold

its collective head high as it heads for thenew millennium.

Footnotes1 Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Na-tionhood and the National Question in the NewEurope, Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp55-762 The Agreement Reached in the Multi-partyNegotiations, Northern Ireland Office, Belfast,1998, pp 11-133 as recommended in Tom Hennessey and RobinWilson eds, With All Due Respect: Pluralism andParity of Esteem, DD report 7, 19974 The Agreement..., p185 ibid, pp 19-206 ibid, p27 See the preamble to the Anglo-Irish Agreement,in Tom Hadden and Kevin Boyle, The Anglo-Irish Agreement: Commentary, Text and OfficialReview, Sweet and Maxwell, London, 1989, pp15-168 See interview with Mr McCartney inHennessey and Wilson, op cit, p509 The Agreement ..., p710 ibid, p20; An Phoblacht, April 30th 199811 The Agreement ..., pp 22-2412 ibid, p1513 ibid, p2614 ibid, p515 ibid, p1816 unpublished research by Austen Morgankindly furnished by the author17 ibid, pp 16-1818 ‘Support for deal is growing among IRA rankand file’, Irish Times, April 25th 199819 ‘Four-to-one in North to vote for Agreement’,Sunday Independent, April 19th 199820 Andy Pollak ed, A Citizens’ Inquiry: The Op-sahl Report on Northern Ireland, Lilliput, Dub-lin, 1993, p31921 The Agreement ..., p9


An architecture for security and human rights in Europe

March 27Opening address: Cedric Thornberry

March 28Theme: Reconciling identity politics with the demands of equality

Case: Northern IrelandSpeaker: Tony GallagherDiscussant: UN representative

Theme: Reconciling sovereignty and self-determinationCase: Hungarians in SlovakiaSpeaker: Adrian GuelkeDiscussant: OSCE representative

March 29Theme: Reconciling diversity and a civil society

Case: BelgiumSpeaker: John FitzmauriceDiscussant: EU representative

Theme: Reconciling individual and minority rightsCase: Ex-YugoslaviaSpeaker: George SchopflinDiscussant: Council of Europe representative

March 30Theme: Reconciling NGO and governmental agendas

Case: Northern IrelandSpeaker: Mari FitzduffDiscussant: NATO representative

Conclusion: An architecture for human rights and security in Europe

Appendix 1: programme


Taciser Belge Helskinki Citizens’ Assembly Istanbul, TurkeyAleksandra Brankovic Council for Human Rights, Center for Antiwar Action Belgrade, YugoslaviaHarald Bungarten North Atlantic Treaty Organisation Brussels, BelgiumJorg Calliess Evangelische Akademie Loccum Loccum, GermanyFinn Chemnitz Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe Vienna, AustriaHasmik Choutilyan Armenian Committee, Heskinki Citizens’ Assembly Yerevan, ArmeniaFeargal Cochrane Centre for Study of Conflict, University of Ulster Derry, Northern IrelandFarimah Daftary European Centre for Minority Issues Flensburg, GermanyHans De Belder The Assembly of European Regions Belgium, BrusselsBernard Dreano Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly Paris, FranceMari Fitzduff Initiative on Conflict Resoloution and Ethnicity Derry, Northern IrelandNiall Fitzduff Rural Community Network Cookstown, Northern IrelandJohn Fitzmaurice Secretariat General of the Commission Brussels, BelgiumTony Gallagher Queen’s University Belfast Belfast, Northern IrelandAdrian Guelke Queen’s University Belfast Belfast, Northern IrelandUlf Hanson University of Ulster, Magee College Derry, Northern IrelandMujo Haskovic Human Rights Centre Sarajevo, BosniaAvril Heffernan Democratic Dialogue Belfast, Northern IrelandJacqui Irwin Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action Belfast, Northern IrelandTony Kennedy Cooperation North Belfast, Northern IrelandPetar Ladjavic Serbian Democratic Forum Zagreb, CroatiaRichard Lewis European Commission Brussels, BelgiumJoyce McMillan Social and Political Commentary Edinburgh, ScotlandDenise Magill Standing Advisory Commission on Human Rights Belfast, Northern IrelandBernhard Moltman Peace Research Institute, Frankfurt Frankfurt, GermanyAnna Nogova Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly Bratislava, SlovakiaQuintin Oliver Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action Belfast, Northern IrelandJeannie Peterson United Nations New York, United StatesAlexander Russetski Helsinki Citzens’ Assembly Tbilisi, GeorgiaGeorge Schöpflin Slavonic/East European Studies, London University London, EnglandEva Sobotkova Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly, Romani Section Czech RepublicFrank Stekettee Council of Europe Strasbourg, FranceCedric Thornberry (formerly) United Nations Geneva, SwitzerlandRobin Wilson Democratic Dialogue Belfast, Northern IrelandJohn Woods New Agenda Belfast, Northern Ireland

Appendix 2: participants


Harald Bungarten is head of the press andmedia service and deputy spokesperson forNATO in Brussels, where he has worked for thelast nine years. He has written over 30 publi-cations on national and international aspectsof environmental policy, energy policy, worldmonetary affairs, infrastructural and regionalplanning and international economic and se-curity questions.

Finn Chemnitz has since 1995 been diplo-matic officer at the Conflict Prevention Cen-tre of the Organisation for Security andCo-operation in Europe in Vienna. Previously,he was deputy head of the OSCE mission toLatvia. From 1981 to 1993 he was an officerin the Royal Danish Air Force, becoming anassistant professor of strategy and politicalscience at the Royal Danish Defence Academy.

Mari Fitzduff is a professor of conflict stud-ies and director of INCORE (Initiative on Con-flict Resolution and Ethnicity), a joint projectof the University of Ulster and the UN Uni-versity. From 1990 to 1997, she was directorof the Northern Ireland Community RelationsCouncil. She has worked as a programme con-sultant on projects addressing conflicts in themiddle east, Sri Lanka and the successorstates of the OSCE and is a board member ofmany national and international institutionsin conflict management.

John Fitzmaurice has worked since 1973

in the General Secretariat of the EuropeanCommission, dealing with relations with theEuropean Parliament. He also teaches at theUniversité Libre de Bruxelles. He has writ-ten extensively on the European Parliamentand European integration, two books and nu-merous articles on Belgian politics as well ason central Europe and the Baltic Region.

Tony Gallagher is a Reader in the Gradu-ate School of Education, Queen’s UniversityBelfast. His research interests include edu-cation systems in ethnically divided societiesand equity policy in education and employ-ment. In recent years he has carried out re-search on labour-market patterns, policytowards separate religious schools and un-derachievement, and government initiativeson ‘equality-proofing’ in Northern Ireland. Heis completing a book on education policy andpractice in divided societies.

Adrian Guelke is professor of comparativepolitics in the School of Politics at Queen’sUniversity, Belfast, where he is also directorof the new Centre for Study of Ethnic Con-flict. Originally from South Africa he was fora period in the mid-90s professor of interna-tional relations at the University of theWitwatersrand.

Richard Lewis is a principal administratorat the European Commission in Brussels,where he has worked on the process of

Appendix 3: speakers and discussants


European integration since 1974. For the past13 years his responsibilities have centred oneastern and central Europe, including twoyears working exclusively on ex-Yugoslavia,during which time he was seconded to theconference on Yugoslavia in The Hague un-der Lord Carrington. A visiting fellow in hu-man rights at the University of Essex, from1993 to 1996 he was deputy head of the com-mission department setting policy on humanrights.

Jeannie Peterson has recently been work-ing for the United Nations Transitional Au-thority for Eastern Slavonia—as chief forreconciliation, education, culture, NGOs andreligion at the headquarters in Vukovar; chiefof the regional office in Vinkovci; and actingdeputy chief of civil affairs. Earlier, sheheaded the UNPROFOR liaison office in Belgradeand the sectoral HQ in Knin, as well as theexploratory mission for UN peace-keeping inMacedonia. She has also held senior positionsin the UN Department for Policy Co-ordina-tion and Sustainable Development and theUN Fund for Population Activities.

George Schöpflin is director of the Centrefor the Study of Nationalism and lecturer inthe politics of central and eastern Europe atthe University of London. His principal areaof research is the relationship between eth-nicity, nationhood and political power, withparticular reference to post-communism. Heis engaged on a work looking at current theo-ries of nationalism and the impact of ethnic-ity on politics in Europe.

Frank Steketee is currently working in theMinorities Unit of the Directorate of Human

Rights in the Council of Europe, where hedeals with the Framework Convention on theProtection of National Minorities and inter-governmental co-operation in the field of pro-tection of national minorities. Before joiningthe Council of Europe, he practised law andwas an assistant professor at the Universityof Leiden.

Cedric Thornberry is an international law-yer, peacekeeper and former assistant secre-tary-general of the United Nations, for whichhe worked for 17 years. Previously, he taughtat Cambridge University and the LondonSchool of Economics, was a foreign corre-spondent for the Guardian in Greece and wasa practising human rights lawyer. Originallyfrom Northern Ireland, he was one of thefounders of the Northern Ireland Civil RightsAssociation in 1968. In the 70s he representedmany applicants at the European Court ofHuman rights. He was for four years directorof administration at the UN but he spent mostof his UN service in international peace-keeping—in Cyprus, the middle east, ex-Yugoslavia and Somalia. In 1992-94, he washead of civil affairs and deputy chief of the50,000-person UN operation in ex-Yugoslavia,as well as senior negotiator with all the Bal-kan parties. He is currently a consultant toNATO in the exercises it conducts with the Part-nership for Peace countries and a visitingprofessor at King’s College in London.

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