I GREW UP in post-conflict Northern Ireland, a society still learning how to live with itself after decades of violence. The institutions were new, the trust was fragile, and the language of rights was not a concept – it was practical, protective and deeply felt.

Against that experience, it is impossible to view the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) as an abstract legal framework.

One of the most persistent criticisms of the debate around the ECHR in the UK was not just its hostility to international human rights law, but its selective amnesia. The Northern Ireland question, so central to the Good Friday Agreement and to the peace process itself, was routinely ignored.

I believe that this omission was not accidental – it was politically convenient. What is far more disturbing is that the Irish Government now appears to be making the same mistake.

The ECHR was written directly into the Good Friday Agreement in the North. It provided an external, neutral framework that established institutional trust for communities emerging from conflict, ensuring rights for both nationalists and unionists. The EHCR has ensured that the protection of rights is not dependent on the politics of the day but serves to safeguard peace.

Simply put, it is a fundamental cornerstone of the Good Friday Agreement and, consequently, of the constitutional arrangement in the North.

Backtracking

Against this background, the UK Government’s long-running debate on the withdrawal from, or dilution of, the ECHR poses a significant risk to the Good Friday Agreement. Yet for much of the debate in Britain, the North barely featured in the narrative. As has often been the case, the North has been treated as little more than an annoyance across the Irish Sea rather than a central concern.

Successive Irish governments rightly criticised our closest neighbour’s approach and consistently emphasised that any weakening of the ECHR would have serious implications for the Good Friday Agreement and stability in the North.

As recently as last September, Simon Harris said in Oxford: “The ECHR’s guarantees cannot be negotiated away, despite what some politicians might claim. Sometimes it is necessary to state the obvious: protecting fundamental rights protects everyone.”

Yet the Government, in early December, decided to co-sign a letter, led by Denmark, at the Council of Europe, which proposes to unpick core provisions of the ECHR. This is a failure of political responsibility.

The Government’s total U-turn on the ECHR is so deeply concerning. By backtracking on their previous commitment to uphold all aspects of the Convention, the Government is legitimising the very arguments it once opposed. Furthermore, this shift in rhetoric towards the ECHR has taken place with very little to no discourse on the implications for the North or the Good Friday Agreement.

This silence suggests a narrowing of outlook, where human rights are treated as a policy issue rather than a commitment. It also risks aligning Ireland with a broader European trend where the protection of rights is considered as an obstacle to be managed instead of upholding values.

The Northern Ireland question

For the North, the stakes are high. Any dilution of the ECHR framework risks reopening questions that were deliberately settled by the Good Friday Agreement. It risks destabilising the delicate balance between rights, identity and governance. And it risks undermining trust, not just between communities in Northern Ireland, but between north and south, and east and west.

The Government often tell us that they are defenders of multilateralism, international law and human rights, but with that comes responsibility. That means upholding human rights frameworks, even when it is not politically convenient to do so.

The ECHR debate cannot be reduced to migration policy or short-term optics. It must be understood in its full historical context. For this island, that context includes decades of conflict, a painstaking peace process, and an agreement that rests on shared legal guarantees.

For those of us who grew up in the North during the peace process, this is not an academic debate. We know how fragile peace can be when rights are treated as negotiable, and how essential independent legal guarantees are to building trust.

Protecting the ECHR is about protecting the Good Friday Agreement; it is about ensuring that its foundations are not quietly eroded by omission or convenience. We should not repeat the mistakes of others by pretending that the North does not matter in this debate. It does, and it always has.

Within this context, the recent decision by the Government earlier to co-sign a letter to adjust key provisions of the ECHR, with the vague banner of “flexibility”, is reckless and irresponsible when it comes to peace and stability on our island.

The Government cannot claim to uphold the Good Friday Agreement while simultaneously proposing to pluck away at the legal framework that underpins it. Yet again, the Government is talking out of both sides of its mouth, invoking human rights when it helps their argument, but undermining them when they become inconvenient.

Today, they pull at one thread of the ECHR; tomorrow, why not another? This would result in the whole agreement unravelling before us. The frameworks governing international law, including the ECHR, matter. We cannot risk diminishing them for political convenience.

Patricia Stephenson is a Social Democrats senator and the party’s foreign affairs spokesperson. Prior to entering politics, she worked in peacebuilding and conflict prevention. She spent six years in East Africa as an international aid worker, including as an EU diplomat in Uganda.