15 Facts About Belfast Agreement

Good Friday Agreement, or Belfast Agreement, is a pair of agreements signed on 10 April 1998 that ended most of the violence of The Troubles, a political conflict in Northern Ireland that had prevailed since the late 1960s.

Belfast Agreement was approved by voters across the island of Ireland in two referendums held on 22 May 1998.

Belfast Agreement set out a complex series of provisions relating to a number of areas including:.

Belfast Agreement was made between the British and Irish governments and eight political parties or groupings from Northern Ireland.

Belfast Agreement reached was that Northern Ireland was part of the United Kingdom, and would remain so until a majority of the people both of Northern Ireland and of the Republic of Ireland wished otherwise.

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Belfast Agreement called for the establishment of an independent commission to review policing arrangements in Northern Ireland "including [the] means of encouraging widespread community support" for those arrangements.

Belfast Agreement affirmed a commitment to "the mutual respect, the civil rights and the religious liberties of everyone in the community".

Article 4 of the British-Irish Agreement required the two governments to notify each other in writing of the completion of the requirements for the entry into force of the British-Irish Agreement; entry into force was to be upon the receipt of the later of the two notifications.

Belfast Agreement exchanged notifications with David Andrews, the Irish foreign minister.

Belfast Agreement then announced to the Dail that the British-Irish Agreement had entered into force .

Main issues omitted by Sunningdale and addressed by the Belfast Agreement are the principle of self-determination, the recognition of both national identities, British-Irish intergovernmental cooperation and the legal procedures to make power-sharing mandatory, such as the cross-community vote and the D'Hondt system to appoint ministers to the executive.

Belfast Agreement commits the government to enshrine the European Convention on Human Rights in law and allows Northern Ireland residents access to the European Court of Human Rights, it required enactment of the Human Rights Act 1998.

Consequently, the Belfast Agreement was a significant factor preventing the repeal of that Act and its replacement with the proposed British Bill of Rights that Prime Minister David Cameron had promised.

Belfast Agreement makes reference to the UK and the Republic of Ireland as "partners in the European Union", and it was argued in R v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union that the Belfast Agreement meant that the consent of Northern Ireland's voters was required to leave the European Union .

The UK Supreme Court unanimously held that this was not the case, but the Belfast Agreement has nevertheless strongly shaped the form of Brexit.