\n<\/p>\n
Northern Ireland\u2019s peace deal cannot be \u201cnegotiated away\u201d by British political figures who want to see the UK quit the European Convention of Human Rights if elected, the Irish t\u00e1naiste has warned.<\/p>\n
The ECHR is an integral part of the 1998 Belfast Good Friday agreement and withdrawal would remove those foundations of peace, according to Simon Harris, Ireland\u2019s deputy prime minister.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ECHR\u2019s guarantees cannot be negotiated away, despite what some politicians might claim,\u201d he will tell the British Irish Association conference in Oxford on Friday.<\/p>\n
He will add that the ECHR was a \u201cfundamental safeguard\u201d and a \u201ccore part\u201d of the agreement reflecting both countries\u2019 shared role as guarantors of the 1998 peace accord.<\/p>\n
Nigel Farage, the Reform UK party leader; Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary; and Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, are among the most prominent politicians who have advocated to leave the ECHR. Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative party leader, has also said she would look into it.<\/p>\n
Harris will also reveal that the UK and Irish governments are to appoint an independent expert panel to try to end the \u201cscourge\u201d of paramilitary violence and intimidation that has dogged pockets of Northern Ireland society since the peace agreement more than 25 years ago.<\/p>\n
The expert panel will report back to both governments in 12 months after examining whether there is merit in a \u201cstructured process\u201d to disbandment, a process similar to that which led to the disarmament of republic and loyalist groups after the 1998 Good Friday agreement.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe this is a process that can potentially draw the history of paramilitarism in Northern Ireland to a close,\u201d Harris will say, adding that he was aware that there were those that opposed the appointment of the experts and he respected their view.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut 27 years after the Good Friday agreement, paramilitarism has not gone away. What I do know, though, is that Northern Ireland has lived with the scourge of paramilitarism for far too long,\u201d Harris will say.<\/p>\n
The decision to leave paramilitary groups out of the Good Friday agreement has frequently been criticised as a mistake because it allowed a level of criminality that does not exist in the rest of British or Irish society to continue.<\/p>\n
Harris said paramilitarism had blighted about a fifth of the communities in Northern Ireland, insinuating its way into multiple aspects of life.<\/p>\n
Last year, the harm caused by paramilitaries was described as an \u201cenduring and malignant legacy of the Troubles\u201d by the UK parliament\u2019s Northern Ireland Affairs Committee (NIAC)<\/p>\n
Consisting of both republican and loyalist groups, they include organisations involved in organised crime and criminality, intimidation in housing, coercive control of victims and survivors of paramilitary violence and illegal money lending.<\/p>\n
The NIAC found the recent cost of living crisis contributed to a \u201ccruel storm\u201d with paramilitaries exploiting and targeting vulnerable groups including single mothers in precarious financial situations.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to explore every credible avenue \u2013 so that the over 20% of Northern Ireland\u2019s population that report that paramilitaries exert control in the areas that they live can begin to live their lives without the intimidation, fear, coercive control and violence that they experience on a day to day basis,\u201d said Harris.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Northern Ireland\u2019s peace deal cannot be \u201cnegotiated away\u201d by British political figures who want to see the UK quit the European Convention of Human Rights if elected, the Irish t\u00e1naiste has warned. The ECHR is an integral part of the 1998 Belfast Good Friday agreement and withdrawal would remove those foundations of peace, according to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19227,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[5520,3375,3668,8178,1042,1547,1921,5469],"class_list":{"0":"post-19226","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-agreement","9":"tag-echr","10":"tag-exit","11":"tag-foundations","12":"tag-friday","13":"tag-good","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-remove"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}