Northern Ireland honors peacemaking women. On Monday, twenty-nine political and civic women were honored to celebrate 25 years of Northern Ireland’s Good Friday Agreement, which former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated would not have been possible without them.
Clinton, Queen’s University Belfast’s chancellor, called medal and honorary degree recipients “determined, unstoppable forces for peace” during her time as Secretary of State.
They included the late Mo Mowlam, Britain’s first female minister for the region, who played a key role in the talks while being treated for a brain tumor, and the founders of Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition, who formed their political party in 1996 to participate in the peace negotiations.
“A quarter century of bloodshed and strife and millennia of embedded sexism had discouraged most women from being in politics, from being in the arena, but not them,” Clinton said, beginning the three-day conference where current and past Irish, British, and EU leaders would speak.
Clinton remarked, “There wouldn’t be a Good Friday agreement to celebrate today without the women of Northern Ireland,” to applause.
The peace treaty ended 30 years of fighting between Catholic nationalists and Protestant Unionist allies of British rule. The Clinton administration brokered the accord.
Mary Robinson, Ireland’s first female president; Arlene Foster, Northern Ireland’s first female first minister; and Lyra McKee, a journalist killed in 2019 during occasional unrest, were all winners.
“I was amazed that my name was among such an illustrious group of women,” said Women’s Coalition co-founder Avila Killmurray at the ceremony.
“However, it’s really nice because I worked mainly with women in local communities and I think very often their contribution over the years doesn’t go recognised enough.”
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