13 September 2007 Edition

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Coiste na nIarchimí launches the Legacy Report

Mick Beyers, PNB Outreach Development Officer with Coiste and Mike Ritchie, Coiste’s Director

Mick Beyers, PNB Outreach Development Officer with Coiste and Mike Ritchie, Coiste’s Director

Coiste na nIarchimí the national republican ex-prisoners umbrella organisation will launch a new publication at the Linen Hall Library on 19 September at 10am.
The Legacy Report: Accessing the potential for network building between republican ex-prisoner groups and victim/survivor groups suggests key themes that affect the building of networks between the two groupings.
The study is based on interviews compiled from 18 victim/survivor groups in the North of Ireland and is intended as a contribution to further ex-prisoner engagement and outreach in the victims sector.  While the report suggests the two groupings are not mutually exclusive, the findings of the report identify five key themes that shape relations between victims/survivors and ex-prisoners.  These themes derive from people and communities that use different frameworks to interpret and interact with their world and to engage with the legacy of the past.  The six themes are: apolitical and political identities; storytelling and political life narratives; normalised and socialised perspectives; repentant and unrepentant views; individual and collective orientations; and, community development approaches.
The report suggests in practice both victim/survivor groups and ex-prisoner groups are similar in their concern with sectarian violence and intra-community strife; the overcoming of poverty and its consequences; the empowerment of people and communities; and the building of a society that promotes healthy human development.  In this way the interests of both victim/survivor and ex-prisoner groupings dovetail in their commitment to improving the quality of life for the individual, their community, and for Irish society.  The report concludes that examining the potential of networking from this shared perspective may contribute towards building future relations.
Mike Ritchie, Coiste’s director, welcomed the findings of the report noting:
As part of dealing with the legacy of conflict, building relationships across previously hostile groups in society is a responsibility we all share.  We are grateful to the groups that participated in our research and look forward to further dialogue.
Since 1998 when it was founded, Coiste has gained a reputation for developing radical and challenging projects which foster greater interaction between republican ex-prisoners and all other sectors of Irish society.  The Legacy Project, under which this report has been commissioned, is a further evolution of that work.  This wider project of capacity building, outreach and engagement seeks to enable republican ex-prisoners to engage with local and regional victim/survivor groups, and to reflect upon opportunities and challenges for dealing with the legacy of the past.  The research component of the project was funded by the Community Relations Council under the Victim/Survivor Groups Development Grant Scheme.  It is an element of Coiste’s Processes of Nation Building Programme that promotes outreach and dialogue between republicans and others.  The programme is funded by the EU Programme for Peace and Reconciliation.

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