Ms Bronagh Hinds:

A Chathaoirligh and members, I very much appreciate being invited to appear before this committee as part of its hearings in preparation of a report to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. I begin by expressing outrage at the attempted murder of Detective Chief Inspector John Caldwell last week. I am assuming this is the committee's first sitting since then. There can be no tolerance of such attacks or of the continuing presence of paramilitarism of any colour in Northern Ireland. My thoughts are with DCI Caldwell and his family. I think of his son and the other children who were bystanders to this horrific act, the new generation for whom we negotiated a peaceful and promising future in 1998.

For Omagh, it is devastating. We all remember the heartbreak of the Omagh bomb cutting through the sense of security and peace engendered by the Belfast Good Friday Agreement, an agreement welcomed by citizens across Ireland, North and South. Omagh has had enough, a Chathaoirligh. We have all had enough. More than 1,000 people marched in Omagh last weekend under the banners "No going back" and "Unite against paramilitary violence". It is safe to say we all stand with them.

I participated in the two years of multi-party talks that led to the Good Friday Agreement on behalf of the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition. As the Chairman said, I co-founded the coalition. I managed our election to the talks and was the strategic adviser throughout to our elected representatives, Ms Monica McWilliams and Ms Pearl Sagar. Prior to that, I had been working on the ground as a director of an Ulster People's College, the programmes for which we developed specifically to deal with the context of working and living in Northern Ireland and building the capacity for community leadership and peace with communities at the hard edge of the conflict.

The 1996 election to the talks saw ten parties, big and small, participate with relatively equal representation, which was designed to enable representatives of loyalist paramilitaries to be included with a legitimate electoral mandate. Sinn Féin had already demonstrated its mandate. We seized the opportunity to address the deficit of women witnessed in previous negotiations. Indeed, in 1996, I can say that in City Hall in Cork, I was speaking about this very gap, never realising that within one month we would be founding a party, running in elections and succeeding in winning places at the talks.

Senator George Mitchell reflected that "The cause of women in Northern Ireland is essential to the cause of peace." Our conflict has shown us and the world that including women and civil society has a positive impact on the capacity to make and sustain peace. Research now absolutely demonstrates that. Northern Ireland is included in Ireland's national action plan on women, peace and security, and Ireland is providing international leadership on these lessons at the UN in support of efforts to resolve other conflicts. I know this from first-hand experience because I have been able to contribute to some of those.

The Northern Ireland Women's Coalition brought skills to the negotiations such as leadership, strategy, managing complexity, policy, drafting, active listening, which is a very underrated skill, relationship building, dialogue facilitation, negotiation and managing competing interests. We were engaged in all of that work. Our links into the hearts of communities gave us the confidence to represent grassroots concerns and aspirations. We were used to working across conflict divides and finding ways to manage our differences that seemed for others to be intractable conflicts.

Throughout the negotiations, we remained focused on our twin goals of ensuring women's equal and meaningful participation and achieving agreement on a durable settlement that would win people's consent. We had an eye to making the negotiating process work through building trust and relationships, challenging those throwing obstacles in the works, clearing up miscommunications, spotting difficulties in advance and offering alternatives. Truth be told, we were actually process-oriented as well as content-oriented in those negotiations.

One strategy was to challenge language and behaviour such as antagonism, bullying, sectarianism, sexism, misogyny and demonising and threatening behaviour, all of which were deeply corrosive of the process. For example, militaristic language such as "battle", "enemy", "smashing", "eyeballing", "destroying" was used quite liberally. Calling those who were prepared to engage in dialogue and compromise "traitors" was intended to intimidate and was, indeed, life-threatening. We were called naive when we challenged hateful rhetoric, but we were far from naive. We realised exactly what we were doing. Abuse was being used to derail negotiation and thwart political progress. Therefore, we continued to stand our ground and the strong public reaction to the offending parties forced them to moderate their behaviour.

Our approach was different from that of other parties. We worked from principles, namely, inclusion, equity and human rights, to guide our position and decisions on others' positions. Those who joined the coalition signed up to being willing to reach an accommodation.

Efforts to pigeonhole us into one or other side of the divide or drive a wedge between women from different political or religious traditions met with failure. We refused to take a position on the constitution at the outset, on the basis that in negotiation we would reframe Northern Ireland's constitutional arrangement, and that is what has happened. We preferred to put our energy into finding a new solution rather than defending traditional positions. We were prepared to live with ambiguity and experiment with various configurations until we reached consensus. We sought to be creative and innovative, explore all ideas and options, offer solutions and reframe issues to assist agreement.

In his statement, Tim O'Connor set out the key strands and issues in the negotiations. We contributed to all of that, from constitutional arrangements to the relationship between different jurisdictions, policing and decommissioning. We did not win the support of other parties, however, for a new electoral system we proposed. We believed it would deliver a more diverse representation. Instead, parties settled on widening participation, with six-seat rather than five-seat constituencies. It was, therefore, disappointing to see the Assembly resile from this later and reduce the number of MLAs by 18. This has an impact on smaller parties and diversity in an assembly.

Not all elements of the agreement have been given the same attention. Alert to governing challenges after protracted conflicts, we proposed the civic form. We wanted to harness the expertise of social and economic actors to assist the Executive, Assembly and people to focus on and drive forward economic prosperity and social cohesion. Although the Assembly has been resurrected many times, the forum was abandoned with the first Assembly suspension despite being legislated for in the Northern Ireland Act 1998. The economic bounce we expected, and should have had, after the peace agreement was lost.

We were strong advocates for the provisions on human rights, equality and reconciliation, adding substantially to these sections. We championed the right of women to full and equal political participation, integrated education and mixed housing and, most important and alone among the parties, recognition and provision for the victims of violence. We also inserted references to community development, social inclusion and other issues.

In his statement, Mark Durkan called for honesty about divergences and deficits in implementation. The civic forum is one such example, but there are others. Despite work by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, there is still no bill of rights in Northern Ireland. When I was deputy chief commissioner of the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland leading the implementation of the agreement's equality aspects, we were in discussion with the Office of the First and Deputy First Ministers on a promised single equality Act. It was promised within the year, but has yet to appear 25 years later.

It is essential that we have no diminution of rights, safeguards or equality due to Brexit and have sufficient resourcing of the equality and human rights commissions, North and South, to monitor and protect these rights. There is concern that victims' rights may be diminished under the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill. The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission views it as failing to comply with the standards set in the victims' directive.

Brexit has utterly changed the context. Civil society was instrumental in developing pathways to peace, facilitating back channels, resolving peace-line conflicts, building cross-community relations and maintaining the social and economic fabric. It helped to establish the conditions for negotiations and the referendums. It significantly contributed to Jacques Delors's vision of a Europe of citizens playing lead roles in establishing and leading pan-European networks and developing the EU's social dimension.

The EU invested in our social and economic reconstruction, as well as in peace and reconciliation. Therefore, reducing EU relations to the equivalent of a lesser version of the old European Economic Community is insufficient. Let me say clearly that I am very much backing the proposals to get us back on track, but it is not the same as being in the whole of the EU with its social dimension. I am, therefore, drawn to Mark Durkan's suggestion of creatively exploring how strands two and three could answer some of the problems created by Brexit.

As a living document, the Good Friday Agreement should continue to evolve, progress and be enhanced. We should, and indeed did, expect the number of North-South bodies to increase from the initial six and the Government's shared island initiative is a very welcome underpinning of relationships and joint projects.

What else should we see moving forward? We should take account of changing demographics and the impact on patterns of representation. Should we revisit the Assembly's voting mechanisms to ensure they properly take account of increases in those designated as "other"?

Paramilitaries exploit children and young people, oppress women, deal drugs, act as loan sharks, intimidate and, as reported only last week, threaten to burn Northern Ireland down if they do not get their way. Enough has been spent on their transition. We must have an end to paramilitary control and criminality. We must ensure no public funds find their way into their hands and instead invest significantly more in women and young people.

The Executive should lead a comprehensive reconciliation strategy with an effective implementation plan and monitoring. Politicians must set an example of reconciliation in their leadership, language and behaviour. It is about time that priority is given to the victims and survivors of conflict and an appropriate approach is taken to the legacy of the past.

I extend my thanks to those who helped us to reach the Good Friday Agreement. They include Senator George Mitchell, the co-chairs John de Chastelain and Harri Holkeri, and their teams;the Irish, Northern Irish and British officials who worked unfailingly to support the parties in the process; the wonderful Mo Mowlam, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland; and all of the Irish and British Ministers. The committee will forgive me if I pick out the female Ministers, that is, Nora Owen and Liz O’Donnell, in the Irish delegation. I want to thank in particular the United States. President Clinton consistently encouraged parties to go the extra mile, in person and by phone, ringing at the most tense moments and putting the most delicate pressure on people to move forward. He, true to his word, has led investment delegations to Northern Ireland since the agreement.

I commend Hillary Clinton who gave visibility to women and led delegations of women from the US to develop partnerships with women in Northern Ireland and invest in their projects. I will give the committee a key example.

When I founded DemocraShe, I had two partners in the United States through Hillary Clinton's Vital Voices initiative. My colleague across the way here will remember it very well because she received capacity building funding in one of those programs. After the agreement, I set about negotiating with every single party in Northern Ireland: nationalists, unionists, pro-agreement, and believe it or not, anti-agreement parties at that time, and was able to run a programme that ran over many years of training women in all of those parties and engaging in strategic discussions with some of the party leaders about how to select more women and get more women into politics. The second was aimed at building the capacity of the vast number of women in civic leadership into actually leading the organisations they were working in. The approach has proved successful. I also am thankful for the EU's extensive financial support, which has funded economic development and Northern Ireland's community infrastructure, enabling it to survive and thrive. These have been important to sustaining the peace.

Brexit shredded the British-Irish partnership as much by the way the UK Government conducted the process as by the act itself. I highlight the Johnson-Frost administration in particular in this. Indeed, the partisan manner in which the administration dealt with Northern Ireland parties also alienated people. In evidence to this committee, John Major and Tim O'Connor testified to the converse example; the respect and partnership between two sets of British prime ministers and taoisigh who stepped back from their traditional sides and worked together for the singular purpose of delivering peace. This was essential to enabling an effective process and reaching agreement. The signs are - and we hope they come true - that the current UK Prime Minister has discarded that approach of his predecessors for one that is more conducive to making progress.

My critique of the implementation of the agreement is in the spirit of review and renewal after 25 years; a quarter of a century. We should and must mark the agreement's success. It stopped decades of violence and saved countless lives and despite the challenges, peace will endure. Young people are growing up to a better future with new expectations and aspirations. We have seen an exponential growth in female politicians and party leaders and this has been terrific. It has shown us opposing politicians working together, at least part of the time, and the agreement created the framework within which peace, reconciliation and prosperity are possible. It is still a work in progress. However imperfect, as all peace processes and agreements are, ours is recognised as a success globally and one which has lessons to share. We are also pioneers in women's engagement in negotiating peace and security. It was not until two years after the agreement that the UN Security Council passed its seminal Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security. Many Northern Ireland women have assisted peace building and negotiation in conflicts across the world. For several years, I have been able to contribute in the negotiations in Geneva on the Syrian conflict, on building a strategy for Afghani leaders who are women, and had the privilege of travelling across Ukraine while working with women in some of the areas that are now occupied.

I trust the political parties have now exhausted their use of the revolving door at Stormont and now with the Brexit impasse resolved, they will speedily return to the Assembly. We simply cannot afford the instability that serves only to squander the benefits. In the final days of the talks, the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition put a proposal on the table seeking collective responsibility and collaboration in selling the agreement for the referendums. We failed because parties were not ready for that step then. A quarter of a century later, it is time for parties to step up to cabinet government, to leave hurts and old enmities outside the door, to stop working in silos and to govern collaboratively for the good of all. I thank members again for this opportunity to contribute evidence and views to the committee's exploration of the Good Friday Agreement. There had been a feeling abroad that the Irish and British Governments disengaged for a period and I think that leaves the situation in Northern Ireland in a very perilous state. I thank members particularly for their continuing interest and for continuing to monitor what is going on. I am glad to see the governments have been re-engaging. It is incredibly important.

I am happy to answer any questions.