Daniel is the Director of the Committee for the Administration of Justice (CAJ) in Northern Ireland. He has kindly written this blog for us as part of series of blogs we’ve commissioned as part of a Strategy Review of our Strengthening Civil Society (Law & Human Rights) programme. He will be joined by other contributors with views from Scotland, England and Wales over the course of 2025.
Power sharing and the Good Friday Agreement structures
The context in which social change and human rights interventions take place in Northern Ireland is not only one of a society emerging from conflict (with an ongoing level of paramilitary activity) and a divided society, but also one of particular political structures and duties flowing from the peace agreements.
The 1998 Good Friday Agreement (GFA) included a bilateral treaty between the United Kingdom and Ireland and was approved by referendum. It established a power sharing executive and legislature, led by the two largest parties representing Irish nationalism and British unionism, which in recent years have been Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) respectively. These institutions, which also allocate ministries to smaller parties, are currently functioning but have previously collapsed for extended periods, most notably from 2017 to 2020 and again from 2022 to 2024.
The incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) into Northern Ireland law was a cornerstone safeguard of the GFA and was implemented through the Human Rights Act 1998. However, a related commitment for an EHCR+ Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland has not been honoured by successive UK Governments.
By contrast, significant changes were made to the GFA institutions at the time of the St Andrews Agreement in 2006 at the behest of the DUP who had just become the then largest party. The new “St Andrews veto” meant in practice that the two largest parties could block most decisions made by individual ministers whenever those decisions were judged to be “controversial” or “significant”. This veto is a very different creature to the GFA’s Bill of Rights under which objective rights-based standards were to constrain the exercise of power.
More recently, as part of the UK–EU Withdrawal Agreement, the Northern Ireland Protocol (now called Windsor Framework) contained a legally-binding commitment to ‘no diminution’ in certain GFA rights because of Brexit. In practice, this means EU law provisions, provided they underpinned GFA rights, continue to have legal effect in Northern Ireland and this does give some continued enforceability over GFA rights.
The past five years
The following five developments relevant to the work of CAJ are illustrative of some of the out-workings of this context:
- Anti-Poverty Strategy: The St Andrews Agreement placed a statutory duty on the NI Executive to adopt a cross-government strategy to tackle poverty on the basis of objective need. On two occasions, in 2015 and again in 2024, CAJ with the support of PILS (Public Interest Litigation Support project) successfully brought judicial reviews against the NI Executive for failing to adopt the strategy. Whilst co-designed comprehensive blueprints for the strategy were produced in the previous mandate, a new DUP Communities minister abandoned them in 2024. The JR has been followed by a consultation on a minimalist draft Anti-Poverty Strategy.
- Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023: Despite universal opposition in Northern Ireland, Boris Johnson’s government unilaterally abandoned a peace process agreement for new transitional justice mechanisms and instead passed the 2023 Legacy Act. This legislation abruptly closed down inquests and other judicial/investigative mechanisms into conflict related violations which had been delivering uncomfortable truths to government. Instead, the Act introduced an amnesty via a ban on further investigations and even civil litigation, and a new limited legacy Commission. The amnesty and other provisions of the Act were all found to be incompatible with the ECHR and the Windsor Framework safeguard (in light of the GFA protecting victims’ rights) by the NI Court of Appeal. Although the Labour Government promised to repeal the Act, it has not yet done so and has appealed aspects of the Court of Appeal ruling, including a challenge to the scope of GFA rights protected under the Windsor Framework.
- Racist intimidation in public space: The racist disorder of the last two summers in NI is part of a much broader pattern of racist and sectarian intimidation often involving elements of loyalist paramilitary groups in their areas of control. Whether threatening racist posters or paramilitary flags used for the purposes of intimidation will be removed has been a long running policy question with public authorities. Given the paramilitary connections and risks of disorder, a non-intervention approach has been prevalent. However, in light of the harms caused by racist intimidation, CAJ, with the support of PILS, issued pre-action correspondence based on ECHR rights, which has prompted a change in approach.
- Bilingual signage and the Irish language: The GFA was intended to mark a shift away from the “English only” policies of the past by providing for the Irish language, and it was followed by the UK’s ratification of a Council of Europe treaty on language rights. Political blockages on the implementation of these commitments however have repeatedly become a touchstone issue as to whether the rights-based provisions of the GFA are being respected. It has taken litigation to progress bilingual signage policy within local government. At the time of writing, a judicial review has been taken against a Minister for a decision to put up bilingual signage at Belfast’s new Grand Central train station (on the grounds it is ‘controversial’).
- The St Andrews Veto: In the absence of the Bill of Rights, the broadly drafted nature of the St Andrews veto has allowed it to become a blocking mechanism over rights-based policy making. The veto has largely been used by the DUP and has stalled provision on the Irish language, same-sex marriage, abortion provision and Covid restrictions. The veto can, in practice, grind decision-making on such issues and others to a halt.
Looking to the future there are a range of challenges ahead for us in the next few years, these include:
- Can Stormont deliver on an anti-poverty strategy? The anger over the strategy is already driving significant mobilisation within civil society, and it may become an important test of whether the current Stormont structures can deliver on socio-economic rights in circumstances where one of the main parties is opposed.
- The fresh run at the ECHR? The hope within the sector that it might be at least five years before having to defend the UK’s membership of the ECHR has faded in light of recent statements from both Reform and Conservative figures promising to “renegotiate the GFA to leave the ECHR,” as well as a Policy Exchange report arguing that UK withdrawal would not breach the Agreement. This cornerstone safeguard of the GFA may therefore once again be under threat.
- Paramilitarism and racist intimidation: The coming years will show whether loyalist paramilitary groups finally cease their activity, whether there is a more interventionist approach to tackling racist and sectarian intimidation in public spaces, and whether public policy develops a more effective response to housing-related intimidation. The recent statement by the Police Federation in Northern Ireland that police intervention during racist disorder in Ballymena “prevented a pogrom” is no exaggeration.
- Will the GFA-rights protection in the Windsor Framework be rendered toothless? The current UK government’s appeal to the Supreme Court (Dillon and Others) against the direct effect of legal enforceability of GFA rights, if successful, could render toothless the main NI-rights based safeguard to be legislated for following Brexit.
- St Andrews veto and the Bill of Rights: The ongoing judicial review against the transport minister over bilingual signage at Belfast’s new Central Station, if successful, is likely to raise further questions about whether the current constitutional arrangements can deliver even the most basic rights-based commitments of the GFA. It could also renew attention on the legitimacy of the St Andrews veto and the continuing absence of a Bill of Rights.