Why did I join MENA2050?
When a communal conflict is both violent and intractable it is worth considering whether it may become less impossible to resolve if we change our perspective.
The Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’ came to an end when people began to see the context as something broader than just a struggle between Pro-British Protestants and Pro-Irish Catholics within Northern Ireland. We started to appreciate that the problem of disturbed historic relationships also involved the relationships between North and South in Ireland, and between Britain and Ireland. Addressing these wider sets of relationships within the European Union context, and with a positive US approach, led to the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement in 1998 and whatever the political difficulties, there has been no serious threat since then of a return to the violence of the past.