Good Friday Agreement

The Good Friday Agreement (GFA) or Belfast Agreement (Irish: Comhaontú Aoine an Chéasta or Comhaontú Bhéal Feirste; Ulster Scots: Guid Friday Greeance or Bilfawst Greeance) is a pair of agreements signed on 10 April (Good Friday) 1998 that ended most of the violence of the Troubles, an ethnic and national conflict in Northern Ireland since the late 1960s. It was a major development in the Northern Ireland peace process of the 1990s. It is made up of the Multi-Party Agreement between most of Northern Ireland's political parties, and the British–Irish Agreement between the British and Irish governments. Northern Ireland's present devolved system of government is based on the agreement.

Issues relating to sovereignty, governance, discrimination, military and paramilitary groups, justice and policing were central to the agreement. It restored self-government to Northern Ireland on the basis of "power sharing" and it included acceptance of the principle of consent, commitment to civil and political rights, cultural parity of esteem, police reform, paramilitary disarmament and early release of paramilitary prisoners, followed by demilitarisation. The agreement also created a number of institutions between Northern Ireland and Ireland ("North–South"), and between Ireland and the United Kingdom ("East–West").

The agreement was approved by voters across the island of Ireland in two referendums held on 22 May 1998. In Northern Ireland, voters were asked in the 1998 Northern Ireland Good Friday Agreement referendum whether they supported the multi-party agreement. In the Republic of Ireland, voters were asked whether they would allow the state to sign the agreement and allow necessary constitutional changes (Nineteenth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland) to facilitate it. The people of both jurisdictions needed to approve the agreement to give effect to it.

The British–Irish Agreement came into force on 2 December 1999. The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) was the only major political group in Northern Ireland to oppose the Good Friday Agreement.

When the Irish Free State was established in 1922 (under the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921), six of the island's northern counties remained part of the United Kingdom. For Northern Ireland, the decades that followed were marked by tensions and controversies, sometimes spilling over into violence, between unionists who favoured remaining with Britain and nationalists who favoured unification with the Irish Free State (later the Republic of Ireland). Starting in the late 1960s, this conflict became more intense and more violent. In the ensuing period of over 30 years, over 3,500 deaths were attributed to these hostilities, which came to be known as the Troubles.

Serious political efforts to end the conflict began in the late 1980s and continued through the 1990s. Ceasefires were declared and later broken. The agreement came after many years of complex talks, proposals, and compromises. Many people made major contributions. Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern were leaders of the UK and the Republic of Ireland at the time, respectively and Mo Mowlam was the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. The talks were chaired by United States special envoy George J. Mitchell.

The agreement is made up of two corresponding documents, both agreed in Belfast on Good Friday, 10 April 1998:

The agreement set out a complex series of provisions relating to a number of areas, including: