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Interview with Jane Morrice, former Deputy Speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly and founding member of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition

In an interview before addressing the colloquy, Jane Morrice, former Deputy Speaker of the Northern Irish Assembly and founding member of the Northern Irish Women’s Coalition, said “inclusion was the key to peace,” both in official negotiations and in daily life. The colloquy "Conflict, prevention and resolution: the role of women," which took place at the Council of Europe on 27 January 2004, brought together female politicians and activists from Cyprus, Chechnya, and the Balkans to discuss the role of women in conflict resolution.

As a member of the Northern Irish Assembly, Jane Morrice joined the negotiations over the Good Friday Agreement, which ended 30 years of political violence in Northern Ireland and which Ms. Morrice calls “nearly the Constitution of Northern Ireland.” In the following interview, she discusses the Agreement, the importance of intergovernmental organisations supporting grassroots efforts for peace, and how Northern Ireland’s example can help Cyprus and Chechnya.

Council of Europe (27.01.2004)

Question: You and the Northern Irish Women’s Coalition (NIWC) were involved in the negotiations for the Good Friday Agreement. What kind of strategies did you use to ensure the Agreement would promote peace?

Jane Morrice : Our core principles are based on human rights, equality, and inclusion. Inclusion is the one used in the strategies for the negotiations because we always talked to everyone. We excluded no one: when people were not talking to each other or only talking through the chair, we would go and talk and find out and pass on. It was an interesting role-to say mediation is maybe going too far, but certainly we were able to listen to everyone involved and that was very important.

As the negotiations progressed, on the Monday before Good Friday there still was not one mention of the possibility of Catholics and Protestants being educated together, of the possibility of integrated education. So we sat down and drafted three lines calling for the promotion of integrated education, mixed housing, and a culture of tolerance. I can safely say if we hadn’t been there, this Agreement, which is nearly the Constitution of Northern Ireland, would not have included integrated education and mixed housing.

Question: How does the Northern Ireland conflict compare to those in Cyprus and Chechnya and other places that are still experiencing conflict?

Jane Morrice : A relative difference with Northern Ireland is that the two communities live side-by-side. You can have next door neighbors going to different schools. We have opposing group living on top of each other yet segregated: 90% of Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland live in separate areas and 94% go to separate schools, yet they live in very close proximity to each other. In regions like Cyprus, there is a distance to a certain extent, which may make it harder for contact between the groups concerned. The daily proximity we have in Northern Ireland creates extra problems early on, but it can be an advantage, in the long-term, because it is easier to form coalition parties such as the NIWC.

Question: So although the tension is there every moment of every day, that means the opportunity to invert that tension into peace is there as well?

Jane Morrice : Exactly. Now in terms of what lessons you might take from the progress we have made in Northern Ireland to share with the Cypriots and the Chechnyans, recall what I said about inclusion. Keep everyone talking, find ways to try to understand the other side. That’s what we in the Coalition did: we were Catholics and Protestants, Irish and British, Unionists and Nationalists, Atheists, Europeans-everyone-and we confronted one another across the table every day. I learned to listen to views I had been brought up to believe were wrong and I had to challenge myself to accept them before putting forward my own views. It was an incredibly interesting experience and it still is in the NIWC, as opposed to the other parties, where they continually talk to themselves and reinforce their own ideas. That constant challenging, intermingling, getting to know, trying to understand the other person’s point of view is the most important process. That’s where peace begins.

Question: What role do you think an intergovernmental organisation like the Council of Europe can play in supporting political parties like yours or everyday women in the political process through its own initiatives?

Jane Morrice : Something that is vitally important is the exchange of experience [among activists and among laymen]. Obviously the Council of Europe is already doing it and I can only encourage more of the same . But something that was also incredibly valuable was simply the support of the outside world [through official European Union-funded programs] for cross-community initiatives that were being set up, often by women’s groups. Many of these groups had been meeting behind closed doors and weren’t talked about openly. So the outside world in the form of Europe coming in and providing concrete support, recognition, and financial resources to sustain these groups was tremendously important. It gave these groups new confidence.