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A new challenge or a new role? The ICRC in Northern Ireland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2013

Geoff Loane
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Abstract

Despite the narrative of success surrounding the Northern Ireland peace process, which culminated in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, there remain significant humanitarian consequences as a result of the violence. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has opened an office in Belfast after its assessments demonstrated a need for intervention. While a two-year ‘dirty protest’ in Northern Ireland's main prison has been recently resolved, paramilitary structures execute punishments, from beatings to forced exile and even death, outside of the legal process and in violation of the criminal code. This article examines the face of modern humanitarianism outside of armed conflict, its dilemmas, and provides analysis as to why the ICRC has a role in the Northern Ireland context.

Keywords

Northern Irelandthe TroublesGood Fridaytransitionlegacypunishment beatingsdirty protest
Type
The ICRC today
Information
International Review of the Red Cross , Volume 94 , Issue 888: ICRC: 150 years of Humanitarian Action , December 2012 , pp. 1481 - 1502
Copyright
Copyright © International Committee of the Red Cross 2013 

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References

1 ‘The four Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocol I confer on the ICRC a specific mandate to act in the event of international armed conflict. In particular, the ICRC has the right to visit prisoners of war and civilian internees. The Conventions also give the ICRC a broad right of initiative. In non-international armed conflicts, the ICRC enjoys a right of humanitarian initiative recognized by the international community and enshrined in Article 3 common to the four Geneva Conventions. In the event of internal disturbances and tensions, and in any other situation that warrants humanitarian action, the ICRC also enjoys a right of initiative, which is recognized in the Statutes of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. Thus, wherever international humanitarian law does not apply, the ICRC may offer its services to governments without that offer constituting interference in the internal affairs of the State concerned.’ See ICRC's mandate and mission, available at: www.icrc.org/eng/who-we-are/mandate/overview-icrc-mandate-mission.htm. All internet references were last accessed in November, unless otherwise stated.

2 The period between 1968 and the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 is known colloquially as ‘the Troubles’, a term that does not carry any legal significance per se and which has been contested by some of the groups engaged in the violence there. For the purposes of this article, reference will be made to the use of violence as reflective of the context during that time.

3 For example, see ‘Northern Ireland: conflict profile – the Troubles in Northern Ireland’, in Insight on Conflict, available at: www.insightonconflict.org/conflicts/northern-ireland/conflict-profile/.

4 For troop numbers, see ‘Table NI-SEC-03: British Army personnel (number) in Northern Ireland, 1969 to 2005’, compiled in Fionnuala McKenna, Brendan Lynn, and Martin Melaugh, Background Information on Northern Ireland Society: Security and Defence, available at: http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/ni/security.htm.

5 Sean O'Hagan, ‘Belfast, divided in the name of peace’, in The Guardian, 22 January 2012, available at: www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jan/22/peace-walls-troubles-belfast-feature.

6 The War of Independence, as it became known, lasted from 21 January 1919 until 11 July 1921. It resulted in partial independence and the partition of the island.

7 Physical Force Irish Republicanism has a long history: see Dr Fearghal McGarry (Queen's University Belfast), ‘The Easter Rising’, in Irish History Live, available at: www.qub.ac.uk/sites/irishhistorylive/IrishHistoryResources/ArticlesandLectures/TheEasterRising/, which discusses the effect of the Easter Rising in 1916 – it ‘led many nationalists to believe that the use of force had achieved more than decades of patient constitutional activity’. In more recent history, such tactics are cited in the Troubles-era Irish Republican Army Green Book; see Irish Republican Army ‘Green Book’ (Books I and II), available at: http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/othelem/organ/ira/ira_green_book.htm.

8 The Northern Campaign refers to the IRA plan to attack British forces in Northern Ireland during the Second World War, between September 1942 and December 1944.

9 The Border Campaign, also known as Operation Harvest, was a series of attacks by the IRA on Northern Ireland in 1956–1962.

10 Detention without trial was introduced on 9 August 1971 in the Special Powers Act. See ‘1971: NI activates internment law’, in BBC News, ‘On this day – 9 August 1971’, available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/august/9/newsid_4071000/4071849.stm.

11 ‘On 7 May 1966 The UVF carried out a petrol bomb attack on a Catholic owned bar and off-licence in Upper Charleville Street in the Shankill Road area of Belfast’: see Brendan Lynn, ‘A chronology of key events in Irish history: 1800 to 1967’, available at: http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/othelem/chron/ch1800-1967.htm.

12 ‘It is the firm will of the Irish Nation, in harmony and friendship, to unite all the people who share the territory of the island of Ireland’: Article 3, Bunreacht Na héireann – Constitution of Ireland, enacted 1 July 1937, in operation from 29 December 1937.

13 ‘Bomb atrocity rocks Northern Ireland’, in BBC News, 16 August 1988, available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/151985.stm. See more recently, John Hall, ‘Two men found responsible for Omagh bombing after landmark civil action’, in The Independent, 20 March 2013, available at: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/two-men-found-responsible-for-omagh-bombing-after-landmark-civil-action-8542702 (last visited March 2013).

14 Rejection of the Good Friday Agreement is outlined in a recent paper by the Republican Network for Unity, which can be seen at: www.scribd.com/doc/112236562/RNU-Standing-outside-the-Peace-Process. On violence, groups espousing such beliefs will often announce it following a bomb or attack: see, for example, ‘ONH claims rocket attack’, in Irish Republican News, 3 August 2012, available at: http://republican-news.org/current/news/2012/08/onh_claims_rocket_attack.html.

15 Infamously in 1981, ten republican detainees died after a protracted hunger strike which followed nearly five years of a dirty protest in which detainees refused to wear prison clothes and smeared their excrement on the cell walls.

16 The ICRC established a series of agreements throughout the period in question in the form of memoranda of understanding, letter exchanges, and oral agreements, which facilitated ICRC visits to places of detention in Northern Ireland. On at least one occasion, the ICRC also visited a prison in Ireland housing political (IRA) prisoners.

17 Some of the violence is discussed in Jamie Smyth, ‘Northern Ireland: a peace to protect’, in The Financial Times, 14 August 2012, available at: www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0e11edd8-da2a-11e1-b03b-00144feab49a.html#axzz2BeAIU2AL.

18 Combatant status under international humanitarian law is granted to those who do not enjoy the protection against attack accorded to civilians (for more information, see rule 3 of the ICRC Customary Law Study: ICRC, Customary International Humanitarian Law, Vol. I: Rules, Henckaerts, Jean-Marie and Doswald-Beck, Louise (eds), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005, pp. 11–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar). This status is not conferred or otherwise by the presence of ICRC operations. ICRC operational or monitoring presence is mainly based on an analysis that an organisation like the ICRC can provide services to respond to the likely humanitarian consequences arising from the use of violence, and in particular related to legal protection and humanitarian assistance. Any legal considerations regarding the qualification of the conflict or attribution of combatant status will be addressed separately.

19 The situation in Northern Ireland, not fulfilling the legal criteria of armed conflict, allows for all forms of violence, except those authorised by the state, to be prosecuted as violations of the criminal code.

20 Such engagement has been discussed in recent issues of the International Review of the Red Cross: see the issues on ‘Engaging armed groups’ (Vol. 93, No. 883, 2011) and ‘Understanding armed groups’ (Vol. 93, No. 882, 2011).

21 For detailed information, see House of Commons, Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, ‘The separation of paramilitary prisoners at HMP Maghaberry’, Second Report of Session 2003–04, Vol. I, 3 February 2004, available at: www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmniaf/302/302.pdf.

22 Based on discussions with ICRC interlocutors.

23 Points of intersection between the two communities are known as interfaces and are often the scene of tension and clashes between communities who live in very close physical proximity to each other.

24 Including under the prohibition of torture, the right to privacy and family life, and the right to an effective remedy under human rights law. See inter alia Arts. 3, 8, and 13 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Under international humanitarian law, see Art. 32 of Additional Protocol I which provides for the right of families to know the fate of their relatives. See also Rule 117 of the ICRC Customary International Humanitarian Law study provides that: ‘each party to the conflict must take all feasible measures to account for persons reported missing as a result of armed conflict and must provide their family members with any information it has on their fate’. ICRC, Customary International Humanitarian Law, Vol. I: Rules, Jean-Marie Henckaerts and Louise Doswald-Beck (Eds.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005 [hereafter ICRC Customary Law Study], p.421.

25 Under human rights law, see recent case law, e.g. Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Moiwana Village V. Suriname, Judgment of 15 June 2005, (Ser. C), No. 124, 2005; European Court of Human Rights, Maskhadova and others v. Russia (application No. 18071/05), and Sabanchiyeva and other vs. Russia, (application 38450/05). Under international humanitarian law, see Art. 17(3), Geneva Convention I, Art. 20, Geneva Convention II, Art. 120(6), Geneva Convention III, Art. 130(2), Geneva Convention IV, Art. 34, Additional Protocol I, and Rule 114 of the ICRC Customary International Humanitarian Law study: ‘parties to the conflict must endeavour to facilitate the return of the remains of the deceased upon request of the party to which they belong or upon the request of their next of kin. They must return their personal effects to them’ (Ibid., p. 411).

26 ‘Save the Children foreign staff ordered out of Pakistan’, in BBC News, 6 September 2012, available at: www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19500103.

27 There is a wealth of literature on this topic. For one introduction, see Nath, Shyam and Sobhee, Sanjeev K., ‘Aid motivation and donor behavior’, in American Review of Political Economy, Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 1–13Google Scholar, available at: www.arpejournal.com/ARPEvolume5number1/nath-sobhee.pdf.

28 Sarah Collinson, Samir Elhawary, and Robert Muggah, ‘States of fragility: stabilisation and its implications for humanitarian action’, in Disasters, October 2012, available at: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20846346.

29 One indicator of this could be the existence of Red Cross and Red Crescent societies in 187 countries.

30 This can be found in Art. 3 common to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, and further examples exist elsewhere, for instance in Art. 70 of Additional Protocol I.

31 International humanitarian law applies in international and non-international armed conflicts, when the legal threshold is reached, whereas below this threshold, human rights law and domestic law apply. In all cases, humanitarian principles guide the decision-making and humanitarian action.

32 The Police Service of Northern Ireland records a total of 127 incidents in 2011 compared to (for instance) 2,438 in 1975. See ‘Security-related incidents: 1969–29 February 2012’, available at: www.psni.police.uk/security_related_incidents_cy.pdf.

33 The EU alone has delivered several tranches of disbursement: see Peace III EU Programme for Peace and Reconciliation 2007–2013, Northern Ireland and the Border Region of Ireland – Operational Programme, available at: www.dfpni.gov.uk/peace_iii_operational_programme.pdf.