The Good Friday Agreement

The good Friday agreement is also known as the Belfast agreement and it was made up of a couple of documents that were related to each other and pertained to peace in Northern Ireland. The agreement was signed in April of 1998 on the good Friday before Easter (this is how it got the name good Friday agreement) and was also a multiparty agreement as well as an international agreement between the Irish government and the British government. People who opposed this agreement were none other than those who were a part of the democratic unionist party in Ireland. The good Friday agreement was implemented after it was signed and it involved a complex series of provisions. These provisions were related to many areas in politics for northern Ireland including the future status of the government in Ireland and the institutions in the United Kingdom and in the republic of Ireland. The good Friday agreement also dealt with the subject of human rights in Ireland and the principle of respect for communities in northern Ireland. The good Friday agreement dealt with respecting the Irish traditions in addition to this. The agreement was approved by the voters of Ireland in May of 1998 and it encouraged a referendum to the constitution of Ireland on that date. The agreement was also approved by both the people of northern Ireland and the republic of Ireland on the same date. The referendum to the constitution that this agreement provoked was realized on the 2nd of December of 1999.

The DUP that was opposed to the implementation of the good Friday agreement took part in a number of illegal acts in order to keep the agreement from coming to fruition. This included the murder of many activists for the agreement and taking up arms against the people of the countries of Britain and Ireland. This set back the implementation of the agreement and also made the agreement less effective in the long run.