Jackie Plaxton (left) and Maureen Brady, both from Belfast, Northern Ireland, traveled together on a Global Village trip to participate in a Women Build project in Denver, Colo.

The Twain Shall Meet
In the killing field that was Northern Ireland, Habitat binds wounds, builds peace.

By Shawn Reeves

HFH Northern Ireland at a Glance

A House is a House is a ... Vehicle for Peace

Building Hope, One House at a Time

Reconciling Through Everyday Encounters

Citigroup, a Peace-building Partner in Northern Ireland

Global Village Unites Volunteers Near and Far

If there's anything more striking than images of bombed buildings, burned-out, smoldering cars, and angry children hurling stones at each other in the streets of Belfast, it's the reality of people there--Catholics and Protestants in equal measure--coming together in peace, building a future characterized by tolerance, reconciliation and compassion, not Molotov cocktails and riots.

For 30 years, Northern Ireland was at war with itself, its people blowing one another up in an explosive declaration of identity.

The army barricades in the city center are gone now, as is much of the fear that so long loitered on downtown street corners. Following a 1994 cease fire among warring Catholic and Protestant factions, that fear has been replaced by shoppers, pub patrons and tourists. When visiting Belfast, it's difficult to reconcile the violent persona so customarily attributed to the people with the sense of hope that seems destined to overcome decades of deep-rooted malevolence.

Since 1994, Habitat for Humanity has established itself in Belfast and throughout Northern Ireland not only as a house builder, but even more importantly as a peace-builder, interpreting a decent, affordable house not so much as an end in itself but as the means to a much larger end of unity and accord.

"In Northern Ireland we are more and more concerned with measuring the outcomes of our work rather than the outputs," says Peter Farquharson, executive director for Habitat for Humanity-Northern Ireland. "It's not about the numbers of houses or even the number of volunteers or the number of Protestants and Catholics that have been involved, although that's a good indicator. We're entering a new area of exploring what reconciliation looks like. What are the indicators of reconciliation? If you're talking about a sustainable peace, what does that look like? We are at the front line of working with organizations to define more clearly what effective peace-building means."

'We are at the front line of working with organizations to define more clearly what effective peace-building means.' --Peter Farquharson, executive director for HFH-NI

Make no mistake: There is a real need for decent housing, as some low-income families struggle in overcrowded conditions, enduring "fuel poverty" and facing "heat-or-eat" situations. But perhaps the more fundamental need in this battle-weary country is reconciliation.

The centuries of conflict, punctuated by three decades of intense violence commonly known as "the Troubles" are what make Habitat's work in Northern Ireland so compelling. During those 30 years, more than 3,600 people--Catholics, Protestants, young, old, often innocent--died violently, and one in every 50 people was injured. If the same ratio were applied to the United States, the number of injured would exceed the population of Minnesota.

Pubs and banks were bombed; residents were abducted from neighborhood sidewalks, then killed or beaten and left for dead; masked gunmen, fueled by hatred and loyalist or republican fury, raided homes or businesses, stealing fathers from daughters, sons from mothers, neighbors from neighbors.

It's a part of the world that's given us C.S. Lewis and Van Morrison, the heart defibrillator and the modern tractor, five Nobel Prize winners and the Titanic. At the same time, it's a part of the world where events as seemingly harmless as parades can stir a pot of resentment that too frequently has boiled over into violent protests, shootings, bombings, torture.


The beauty of Northern Ireland and the warmth of its people belie a violent history that has plagued and destroyed so much and so many. Even in the wake of an 11-year cease-fire, it is still divided in many ways, where, in so many neighborhoods, Catholics feverishly embrace nationalism, seeking a united Ireland, and Protestants grip unionism, seeking instead--and with equal vehemence--to preserve a union with Great Britain.

Habitat homeowner Lynn Paul works on her house in Protestant Ballysillan. Her home, which she will share with her husband Leonard and their sons Robert, Neil and Jonathon, is the last of a collection of eight houses Habitat for Humanity has built there, bringing Catholics and Protestants together in the process.

Paramilitaries on both sides still cast a coercive net across Northern Ireland neighborhoods, controlling life there through extortion, fear and intimidation. And conflict still surfaces from time to time in "interfaces," those areas that physically link one community to another and that, consequently, have served as hot spots for sectarian violence. As part of the 1998 Belfast Agreement, which helped pave the way for more peaceful days, some 20,000 prisoners from both sides were released. Many have turned their backs on violence; some have reclaimed it.

Unlike race relations in the United States, where differences are and have been declared by the color of one's skin, sectarianism in Northern Ireland is in one sense more subtle, surmised by such otherwise innocuous questions as, "Where do you live? What school did you attend?" and even "What's your name?"

In a country where some 70 percent of working-class neighborhoods are segregated, single-identity communities, clearly marked by emblems, flags, murals and graffiti, answers to such questions can and do indicate "which foot you kick with," as construction supervisor Danny Burns phrases it.

In one story, a grade-schooler encountered a classmate who informed him of his Muslim faith, to which the first child responded, "So does that make you Catholic or Protestant?" This, it seems, reflects the bedrock from which many people in Northern Ireland proclaim their identity: "Are you Catholic or Protestant?"

Intermixed at one point, demographics in these communities have shifted over the years as each "side" gravitated toward its "own" under threats, both perceived and real, from the other. Northern Ireland today is approximately 55 percent Protestant and 45 percent Catholic. For years, nightly riots were the norm, cross-community interaction the exception and an increasingly distant possibility. Families crouched in darkness, sleeping in shifts, keeping buckets of water on hand in order to more quickly douse flaming gasoline bombs. It was and is always worse in the lower income neighborhoods.

In an attempt to stop, or at least minimize, the violence, authorities erected dozens of so-called "peace walls," which snake through neighborhoods and reach as high as 50 feet. And their effect goes beyond physically dividing people.They impinge on the availability of housing, as well.

Because of the peace walls, "communities cannot simply expand their neighborhoods to meet the housing need," says David Blake, program manager for HFH-NI. And while the walls may help curb the conflict, they also impose a psychological barrier, says Claire Moss, Habitat's communications manager and a native of Belfast. They reinforce the idea that "you're not supposed to go there," that one shouldn't get to know the people who live, work and play on the other side. The result: utter suspicion and mistrust.


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