Human Rights and Community Relations: Competing or Complementary Approaches in Responding to Conflict?

Over recent years a debate has begun to develop between two broad schools of theory related to modes of intervention in, and appropriate responses to conflict. On the one hand are conflict resolution and community relations practitioners, broadly characterised as those who favour a more pragmatic approach to dealing with conflict, on the other hand human rights practitioners who can similarly be characterised as encouraging a principled approach that emphasises the need for justice.

This debate is engaging practitioners and researchers who have been involved in some of the most protracted contemporary conflicts. A recent issue of Human Rights Dialogue published by the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs included papers on this topic from practitioners and activists in Northern Ireland, Nigeria, South Africa and Sri Lanka.

These issues are of relevance to Northern Ireland where human rights have been a prominent feature of discussions both about dealing with the past and creating a new society, but also in relation to ongoing conflict and emergent disputes. The creation of the Human Rights Commission, the debate over the Bill of Rights and the police reform programme are examples of how human rights have taken centre ground in the peace process.

Human rights issues have also been central to the disputes over parades routes and the conflict over territorial control of in interface areas of Belfast. These examples have asked difficult questions of both human rights activists as well as of conflict resolution / community relations practitioners.

However the emergence of human rights as a central strand in the search for a more just society has not been unproblematic: the search for 'truth' and justice can sometimes clash with attempts to reconcile hostile parties. This has led to an unresolved debate over the need to give immunity to those responsible for violence and seeks to incorporate them into a peace process or whether one should seek to bring such perpetrators to justice.

A second issue is linked to the fact that the human rights agenda appears to some to have been largely appropriated by one community and is being used to further their demands. This serves to undermine support for the idea of universal rights and instead demands for human rights is perceived as one strand of a larger strategy in the ongoing conflict.

ICR received funding from the Community Foundation for Northern Ireland under the Social Justice programme to organise a round table conference to initiate a broader debate on these themes among those most centrally and practically concerned with this subject. This enabled us to invite key speakers from outside of Northern Ireland to participate in the project.

Other speakers at the conference were

We hope that the conference will serve to:

We are hoping that the presentations will be written up and form the basis of a report, which will permit the further development of this debate within our local context.