Writing to express our urgent and unequivocal opposition to the United Kingdom’s so-called “Legacy and Reconciliation” Bill pending before Parliament. In our view, the proposed legislation violates both the Good Friday Agreement and international law, and undermines the Northern Ireland peace process that the U.S. government has played a critical role in fostering for two decades.
Ad Hoc Committee to Protect the Good Friday Agreement
June 22, 2022
The Honorable Antony Blinken
U.S. Department of State
Office of the Secretary
Room 7226
Harry S. Truman Building
2201 C Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20520
Dear Secretary Blinken:
We are writing to you as members of the Ad Hoc Committee to Protect the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) to express our urgent and unequivocal opposition to the United Kingdom’s so-called “Legacy and Reconciliation” Bill pending before Parliament. In our view, the proposed legislation violates both the Good Friday Agreement and international law, and undermines the Northern Ireland peace process that the U.S. government has played a critical role in fostering for two decades.
The Ad Hoc Committee was formed in early 2019 by a group of forty Americans who have worked for decades on the Northern Ireland peace process. We are a bi-partisan group that includes five former Ambassadors and two former Special Presidential Envoys. Over the last three and half years the Ad Hoc Committee has actively engaged with British and Irish diplomatic and political leaders as well as with countless political, business and civic leaders in Northern Ireland.
In the last eight months alone we have met with the Northern Ireland Secretary of State Brandon Lewis on three separate occasions, with Lord Jonathan Caine, the Parliamentary Under Secretary for Northern Ireland, and most recently on two occasions with Conor Burns, M.P. who was recently appointed the Prime Minister’s Special Representative to the US on the Northern Ireland Protocol.
These meetings follow on from our September 2021 letter to Prime Minister Johnson raising deep concerns about the sweeping amnesty proposed in the July 2021 Command Paper on legacy. On each and every occasion when we have met with our British counterparts, we were assured that a revised legacy proposal would be compliant with both the spirit and core tenets of the GFA and incorporate human rights standards as well as reflect the concerns of victims and survivors.
The pending Bill does none of these things. Along with independent legal experts in Northern Ireland and Great Britain, we have concluded that the proposed legislation ignores the expressed concerns of the people of Northern Ireland across community and party lines, and violates the GFA and human rights standards under UK and international law that the agreement incorporated. Litigation over these deficiencies is certain to lead to years of further delay in addressing Northern Ireland legacy issues.
First, we note that the pending Bill, as the Command Paper before it, is opposed by all of Northern Ireland’s political parties, from Sinn Fein to the Democratic Unionist Party. So too it has generated opposition from victims’ groups from both nationalist and unionist communities as well as Northern Ireland’s leading human rights NGOs. Such public reaction is hardly surprising given that there was no formal, transparent, or public consultation with the concerned people and groups in Northern Ireland prior to the introduction of the Bill. This lack of engagement stands in sharp contrast to the legacy framework that the UK and Irish governments agreed to in the December 2014 Stormont House Agreement and reaffirmed in the 2020 New Decade, New Approach Agreement. There are well over 1,000 civil cases still in the courts and the recent Ballymurphy inquest, which declared all ten victims innocent, suggests that truth and justice can still be secured,
Second, the proposed legislation violates the GFA. The GFA committed the UK and Irish governments to peace and reconciliation through adherence to fundamental human rights. In particular, the GFA called on the two governments to incorporate the European Convention on Human Rights, to which they were already parties, into their domestic laws, which they did. Article 2 of the ECHR guarantees “the right to life.” As interpreted by both the European Court of Human Rights and the UK Supreme Court, this right requires that governments effectively investigate cases of alleged state killing. Among the resulting requirements, any investigation must be: 1) initiated by the state; 2) independent; 3) effective and at least capable of leading to prosecution; 4) open to public scrutiny; 5) sufficiently involve next of kin; and 6) carried out with reasonable expedition. There is consensus among independent legal experts that the pending Bill fails on all counts. The Ad Hoc Committee is doubly dismayed given the repeated, personal assurances that British officials gave us that any proposed legislation would be Article 2 compliant.
Precisely because it so manifestly violates the requirements of the ECHR and GFA, the proposed legislation, if enacted, will guarantee years of protracted litigations, first in UK courts, and then at the European Court of Human Rights. In this light, there can be no more effective way to undermine peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland with regard to legacy, than to enact this proposal. We understand that the pending Bill is being fast tracked through Parliament. We therefore respectfully call upon you to use all possible diplomatic channels necessary to oppose this potential violation of the GFA without delay.
Cong. James T. Walsh (R) Cong. Bruce Morrison (D)
Co-Chairs of the Ad Hoc Committee
Hon. Elizabeth Frawley Bagley
Special Representative for Global Partnerships, U.S. Department of State (2009-2010)
U.S. Ambassador to Portugal (1994-1997)
Hilary Bierne
Chairman, St Patrick’s Day Foundation New York City & Chief Administrative Officer of the New York City Saint Patrick’s Day Parade
James Boland
Immediate past President, International Union of Bricklayers & Allied Craft workers
Jennifer Frankola Crawford, Esq.
Immediate past President, Brehon Law Society of New York
John V. Connorton, Jr. CBE
Hawkins, Delafield and Wood, LLP (retired)
Dan Dennehy
Hudson Valley Irish Center, founding Chair
Susan Davis
Chairman, Susan Davis International
Hon. Susan Elliot
Ambassador (ret), former U.S. Consul General Belfast
John Feerick
Norris Professor of Law, Fordham Law School, Dean Fordham Law School (1982 -2002)
Recipient of the Belfast Ambassador Medal (2018)
Martin Flaherty
Leitner Family Professor of International Human Rights Law
Founding Co-Director | Leaner Center of International Law and Justice, Fordham Law School
Martin Galvin
Ancient Order of Hibernians
Loretta Brennan Glucksman, CBE
Chairman Emeritus, American Ireland Fund.
Hon. Senator Gary Hart
Northern Ireland Envoy (2014 -2016) for U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry
Hon. Kitty Higgins
Former Secretary to the President’s Cabinet (William J. Clinton)
Deputy U.S. Secretary of Labor (William J. Clinton)
Hon. Peter King
Member of Congress, 1993 -2021
Co-chair, Congressional Friends of Ireland Caucus
Peter C. Kissel
National President, Irish American Unity Conference
Hon. Billy Lawless
Former Senator for the Irish Diaspora, Seanad Eireann
Mike McCurry
Former White House and State Department Spokesman for President William J. Clinton
Michael W. Martin
Associate Dean for Experiential Education, Director of Clinical Programs, & Clinical Professor of Law, Fordham University School of Law
Domhnall O’Cathain
President, Brehon Law Society, New York City
Danny O’Connell
President, Ancient Order of the Hibernians
Brian J. O’Dwyer
Grand Marshal, NYC Saint Patrick’s Day Parade 2019
Brendan O’Leary
Lauder Professor of Political Science, author three-volume study, A Treatise on Northern Ireland
University of Pennsylvania
Hon. Martin O’Malley
Former Governor of Maryland (2007-2015)
Hon. Kevin O’Malley
U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Ireland (2014 -2017)
Kimberly Cowell-Meyers
Associate Professor of Government
American University
Sean Pender
Vice President, Ancient Order of the Hibernians
Paul Quinn
Director, American Ireland Fund
John Rogan
Visiting Clinical Professor of Law, Fordham University Law School
Robert J. Savage
Professor of History & interim director of the Irish Studies Program, Boston College
Ted Smyth
President Advisory Board, Glucksman Ireland House, NYU
Hon. Nancy Soderberg
Former Deputy National Security Advisor to President William Clinton (1993-1997)
Alternate U.S. Representative to the United Nations (1997-2001)
Hon. Mike Sullivan
U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Ireland (1999 -2001) & former Governor of Wyoming
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend
Former Lt. Governor of the State of Maryland
Melanne Verveer
U.S. Ambassador for Global Women’s issues (2009-2013)
White House Chief of Staff to First Lady Hillary Clinton
Bonnie Weir
Senior lecturer in Political Science, Yale University, Research Associate of the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, Co-Director of the Program on Peace & Development
Carol Wheeler
Founder, Washington Ireland Program
c.c.
Uzra Zeya, Under Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights
Karen Domfried, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs
Jake Sullivan, Director, National Security Council, the White House
Amanda Sloat, Senior Director for Europe, National Security Council, the White House
Karen Pierce DCMG, British Ambassador to the United States
Daniel Mulhall, Irish Ambassador to the United States
Brandon Lewis, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland
AdHocGFA.org 