Ms Emma DeSouza:

It is a pleasure to be here this morning. I thank the Chair and committee members for the invitation to contribute to this conversation.

The Good Friday Agreement includes a commitment to North-South equivalence on rights as well as the full participation of women in public and political life. An International Peace Institute study of 182 peace agreements signed between 1989 and 2011 found that when women are included in peace processes, there is a 35% increase in the probability that a peace agreement will last 15 years or more. Why do I say this? It is because constitutional change is ultimately a peace process. Yet in Northern Ireland, women peacebuilders remain an underutilised resource in advancing the peace process, tackling institutionalised sectarianism and working toward constitutional change.

Women face higher levels of harassment, abuse and threats to their safety. The failure to implement UN Security Council Resolution 1325 and a slew of other rights-based provisions has detrimentally impacted the women’s sector and stymies the capacity and confidence of women to safely engage on the topic of constitutional change.

Regarding the barriers to women’s participation in constitutional conversations, I will start by talking about representation. Women continue to be under-represented in political and public life. At present, women account for 31% of local councillors, 37% of MLAs and just 27% of MPs. Women represent 23% of chairs and 38% of all public appointments. In the Civil Service, women represent 11% of permanent secretaries and 35% of senior civil servants.

In the absence of gender equality, civic society has become the vehicle for women’s participation, with women often outnumbering men in community groups and civic projects. With appropriate funding society could significantly advance constitutional conversations.

One vehicle for civic voice was the Civic Forum under the Good Friday Agreement. The forum lasted only two years, and there is little to no political appetite for its return. Restoring the Civic Forum as envisioned in 1998 lacks ambition and would not achieve the full potential of strengthening the civic voice. In the 26 years since the agreement, there have been considerable advancements in participatory democracy structures. Rather than create a top-heavy structure like the Civic Forum, a more inclusive structure that incorporates various elements of participatory democracy can be more effective.

A recent example of taking a new approach to addressing the absence of a civic forum is the Civic Initiative, which I founded in collaboration with several civic society and community-based groups. The Civic Initiative consists of an oversight committee, content curation committee and process design committee. The initiative launched a people-led examination of socioeconomic and cultural rights under the Good Friday Agreement in 2023. It does so in four stages: regional forums and grassroots workshops; an open call for further evidence, written evidence and survey responses; a citizens’ forum of 100 citizens randomly selected through a postal lottery; and recommendations delivered to the Northern Ireland Assembly, the UK Government and the Irish Government. This structure is very different from that of the Civic Forum. A key difference is that citizens on the ground were empowered to create the agenda.

In November, the Civic Initiative will be delivering a citizens’ forum on housing. The topic of housing was selected by the people who took part in the regional workshops, 38 of which took place across Northern Ireland and in Border counties. Some 61% of participants in Civic Initiative workshops had never taken part in a similar structure or workshop before.

Funding is a significant barrier to increasing women’s voice in the area of constitutional change. The women’s sector has been systemically underfunded for decades, pushing many women’s groups into service delivery and inter-sector competition and leading to a downtick in youth participation and long-term strategies due to funding insecurity. Most community and voluntary groups operating in the women’s sector have to apply for funding on an annual basis, with no safety net or guarantees that their funding will be renewed. Imagine trying to encourage young people to go into a job where they will be put on notice on an annual basis and not know if they will be keeping their job or not.

I will point out something about the all-island women's forum that my friend and colleague highlighted. The all-island women's forum was launched a few years ago and funded through the Department of Foreign Affairs. The structure was very effective in building community networks and bringing women together across the island to look at areas of shared experience. It created very ambitious recommendations that were delivered to the Government. The funding for the all-island women's forum has been cut and not one of the recommendations that were put forward has been implemented. In the area of constitutional change, there is no specific funding scheme, and due to the precarious and limited funding currently available, many community and voluntary groups simply do not have the funding, staff, or capacity to roll out programs and work related to constitutional change.

A further barrier is violence against women. Northern Ireland is statistically one of the most dangerous places in Europe for women, with femicide levels only outstripped by Romania. Research from Ulster University suggests that 98% of women in Northern Ireland have experienced at least one form of violence or abuse in their lifetime. According to PSNI data, women account for 78% of all victims of sexual crimes and 68% of victims of domestic violence. However, it took 23 years following the Good Friday Agreement for the Northern Ireland Assembly to even agree that a strategy for tacking violence against women and girls was needed.

Regarding measures to improve representation and participation, I would recommend having ring-fenced funding with a review to implement long-term funding for women’s groups, creating a stand-alone funding programme for constitutional conversations. I also recommend making a joint commitment with the Northern Ireland Assembly to developing an all-island approach to ending gender-based violence. This was recommendation of the all-island women's forum. I also recommend launching a citizens’ forum and ensuring that forum has gender parity. Reviewing the language used around constitutional change is very important because language on this island is often so contested that we need to find a new way to reach people through the language we use.

I call for a commitment from all parties ahead of the general election here in Ireland to reserve three Seanad seats for Northern Ireland within the Taoiseach nominations. This is not the first time I have made this point but the fact that there is not actual representation from Northern Ireland in these Houses on a regular basis is detrimental. In the absence of creating a panel that is specific for Northern Ireland, there should be three seats with one from each of the main communities in Northern Ireland reserved within the Taoiseach's nominees.