Good morning, and thank you, President DeGioia.
Secretary Clinton, Ambassador Verveer, thank you for the warm welcome and for the invitation to mark 25 years of the Good Friday Agreement with you, and with the many women here today who were integral to peace on the island of Ireland.
Women in the Peace Process
Because of the Good Friday Agreement, Ireland was able to overcome history and create a new future.
25 years on it shines as a beacon of hope, an example of how the impossible can be achieved when people work together to build a sustainable peace.
By ending the cycle of violence and retaliation, it gave people the freedom to live their lives and dream once again. We are a different Ireland and a better Ireland because of it. There is still much to do.
The great success of the Agreement is that it helped heal decades of violence and prejudice. But unfortunately, as we know, other forms of prejudice survived and endured. New ones emerged.
The central role of women in the peace process was visible to everyone involved at the time.
You were there at its formal and informal genesis, you played a leading role at the political tables in Belfast, London, Dublin and Washington, and you provided the voices in civil society which shaped the context in which peace became possible. You picked up the pieces when things fell apart, and moved forward when others kept trying to drag us back.
And yet some of these contributions went unrecognised afterwards.
As Bernadette Devlin McAliskey said the real problem was that women weren’t written out of the history, they were never written into it in the first place.
Women from across the political spectrum were able to contribute to everything, except it seems, the photographs at the end.
I believe we can have no meaningful commemoration of the Good Friday Agreement this year unless the role of women is recognised and applauded.
International studies have confirmed what we have learned in Ireland. The greater the participation of women in peacebuilding, the greater the likelihood any agreement reached will last. The Good Friday Agreement stands as testament to this.
Women in Northern Ireland earned their seats at the table through determination and talent, by engaging with the democratic process. Women like Bríd Rodgers, the first female chairperson of any political party in Ireland.
The work of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition, co-founded by Dr. Monica McWilliams, working with May Blood and many more, was critical to influencing the final Agreement, including the language in the Agreement on housing, schooling, victims, and reconciliation – all essential components to peacebuilding then and since. By standing up and speaking out they changed the history of Ireland forever.
On behalf of a grateful nation, thank you also to Liz O’Donnell, who as a Minister of State in the Department of Foreign Affairs, represented the Government of Ireland at the negotiation table. Over a sustained period of intense and difficult work, she was instrumental in encouraging people to the table and persuading them to stay the course.
We pay tribute to Mo Mowlam who, in helping to negotiate the Agreement, touched people’s lives in a way so few could compare. As one academic said, ‘she changed the weather, altered the atmosphere and got people to trust her.’
So today matters. The story of ‘women at the helm’ is not a separate story to the story of the peace process. It is an integral part of it - a part which shines a light on the more uncomfortable aspects of our society and our attitudes.
The Good Friday Agreement and the United States
Today I also want to remember a remarkable woman, Joyce McCarten, a Protestant from Northern Ireland who married a Catholic, and who heard the shots that killed her youngest son in her own home.
Afterwards, Joyce was driven by a desire to move beyond the pain and suffering her family and others had endured. She established the Lamplighter drop-in centre where people could talk, mingle and find some ease from their pain. In 1995 it was visited by your First Lady.
Secretary Clinton, you helped make peace in Northern Ireland, and Ireland in turn helped inspire you as you applied the lessons of the peace process to other conflicts around the world.
That visit was influential because it offered tangible evidence for how the wrongs of the past could be forgiven and how peace and reconciliation could finally be achieved.
The story reminds us that although the Good Friday Agreement belongs to the women and men of Ireland, and especially Northern Ireland, it was also made here in America.
We owe a debt of gratitude to our American friends and partners. Secretary Clinton, thank you for being such a dedicated advocate for Northern Ireland, a role you continue to fulfil through your Chancellorship of Queen’s University in Belfast.
Over the last 25 years, the United States has played a central role in helping to implement the peace process, providing assistance at critical junctures.
The Irish peace process is one of the greatest success stories of American foreign policy, and it was achieved by administrations from both sides of the aisle over the past three decades.
Your ongoing friendship is essential as we continue to protect, to nurture and to grow the achievements, benefits, and commitments of the Good Friday Agreement.
We also know that, where political institutions are not functioning fully, it is often women who feel the negative social and economic effects deepest.
Women’s leadership, vision and inspiration is needed today more than ever to ensure that Northern Ireland, and the entire island of Ireland achieves its true potential.
It means making space for our young leaders – women as well as men – to take the helm. This is their time to promote peace and prosperity for the people of Northern Ireland and all of Ireland, as we look to the next 25 years and beyond.
Conclusion
In Ireland and around the world too many women live in fear of violence. We know of too many examples of women who live in the shadow of domestic violence, or who suffer random or targeted acts of aggression.
In even the greatest of countries, too many girls and boys live in fear of gun violence, where even a school is not a safe space.
This must stop. And it can stop.
We need to recommit ourselves to a new vision of freedom, one that gives all women the freedom to live their own lives, and to be able to laugh, love, and dream their own dreams without fear or consequence.
That is my dream and I know it is one we all share. Let this be our message this year.
So, thank you all, and Happy St. Patrick’s Day.