Northern Ireland's Agency in International Law

Both internally and externally, Northern Ireland’s participation in international law makes it, perhaps surprisingly from a traditional constitutional and international legal perspective, an active agent. This agency ranges from directly creating international law and legal relationships to influencing the development of jurisprudence and recommendations within international legal bodies and fora. From an internal constitutional perspective, a central element of Northern Ireland’s constitution is a piece of international law. The 1998 Belfast/Good Friday Agreement is both a treaty between the United Kingdom and Ireland and an internal peace settlement. The 1998 Agreement is essential to how Northern Ireland is governed, but it is also the framework within which the UK itself is further bound by other parts of international law, for instance, the European Convention on Human Rights. It also frames the inter-state relationship between the UK and Ireland. From an external international law perspective, Northern Ireland demonstrates a unique form of agency when read alongside traditional ideas of the state in international law. This is particularly evidenced in the area of international human rights law, where Northern Ireland has made important contributions to jurisprudence as well as to monitoring processes such as the United Nations Universal Periodic Review. From this, both the internal and the external make Northern Ireland a site of international legal interest.