Community Voices is an interview series where Michael Avila and Ani Kanakaki speak to a range of folks from the voluntary and community sector in Northern Ireland about the work they’re doing to bring about positive change. The series, formally known as #AtsUsNai, is produced in partnership with AvilaMedia and funded by the Community Relations Council. This first interview is with Anne Carr who through the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition played a vital role in ensuring that women were represented in the negotiations that led to the Good Friday Agreement 1998. She has continued to play an important role in NI’s reconciliation process ever since.

As a young woman growing up through The Troubles on Belfast’s Shankill Road, Anne has seen it all. From grassroots community activist, to peacemaker, to United Nations advisor, there isn’t much in the peace and reconciliation process that Anne hasn’t seen.

Anne benefited greatly from having spent a portion of her childhood in the Niagara Falls region of Canada, receiving first-hand experience of what growing up in a diverse and accepting community is like. When she returned to Belfast, the city’s troubles were more foreign to her than the life she left behind in Canada. To make matters more difficult, Anne brought up a ‘mixed’ family, something considered taboo at the time. Despite the many threats to her and her family, she pressed on in the fight for a better future for Northern Ireland.

Anne joined Women Together in 1990, a cross-community group of working-class women who stood up to paramilitary violence and organised for peace from the very beginning of the conflict. Anne, along with many women from across Northern Ireland, later formed the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition – a group famous for the crucial role it played in brokering the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement, effectively bringing 30 years of conflict to an end. The Women’s Coalition were able to get two women elected to the negotiating table. Were it not for their dedication and perseverance towards peace, no women would have been present in the talks that eventually led to Northern Ireland’s peace accord.

Anne knew at the time that the work to create a better society doesn’t stop with moments like the Agreement – it starts. In our interview, she pointed out that most peace agreements around the world are followed by a return to violence, not the peace they are supposed to restore. So in the years following 1998, Anne worked alongside others to build Community Dialogue, a community organisation helping to foster better relations and mutual understanding between traditionally fragmented communities. Dialogue is the process that helps people in deeply divided communities to understand one another, lessen fear of the ‘other’ and create an acceptance with difference that provides the foundation of a shared society where everyone can feel a sense of  belonging.

Anne has continued working at the grassroots level, facilitating projects to ease tensions and heal communities of their divided pasts. The steadfast dedication to peace of community workers like Anne has been on display in North Belfast very recently – in North Belfast, where Anne works, members of the community decided to begin removing one of the Troubles’ longest standing peace walls.

In Anne’s mind, for the most part the community sector in Northern Ireland has done its job – there is more understanding between the two major communities and we haven’t fallen back into conflict. But peace is much more than an absence of violence. There’s still a need to build reconciliation, essential to building a more shared society – the cost of division is huge.

Today the real challenge comes from the top down, not the other way around. Though work still needs to be carried out in the grassroots, Anne says that, generally speaking, communities throughout Northern Ireland are ready for change; this new generation wants progress. For Anne, the biggest roadblock to this has been austerity and lack of political leadership. The absence of investment in working-class estates leaves young men, in particular, little alternative to joining proscribed organisations. This needs to be resolved if Northern Ireland is to genuinely move forward.

Anne has a pragmatic view of the ‘New Decade, New Approach’ deal that recently brought about the return of power-sharing at Stormont. She’s pretty adamant: “this is a time for doing, not talking. All that has ever needed to be said about what needs to be done has been said – it’s time to do, to take action!”

With that in mind, Anne is sceptical about the plethora of new bodies that are to be set up as part of this deal. While citizen engagement is mentioned in the ‘New Approach”, she calls for the Civic Forum – which was to be established as part of the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement – to be reinstated and resourced properly. A much more inclusive, robust and effective model like this, she says, can help to make sure that politicians are well informed and that policy reflects real needs on the ground.

Anne is delighted with Stormont’s return, with political parties renewing their commitment to making power-sharing work. “It is time to show real leadership and so far the mood music has been promising,” she says.

For women living in disenfranchised areas of Northern Ireland, Anne says that they are painfully aware of the issues they face. We need to stay resolute and hold government accountable to living their part of the agreement and helping bring about a better, more prosperous and less divisive future for all communities in Northern Ireland.

“Our communities are ready for change – it’s up to our leaders to deliver!”

Having worked  as an advisor to the UN and in conflicts all over the globe, Anne has seen peace come and go. If there’s anyone that understands peace at the grassroots level, it is her. Her actions, persistence and optimism is what leadership looks like.

 

AvilaMedia is a social enterprise running community and research projects across Northern Ireland. If you’re interested in being interviewed for the #AtsUsNai project, you can get in contact with AvilaMedia here.