The 'Forgotten Victims': Violent Displacement in the Northern Ireland Conflict

Brendan Ciarán Browne

The conflict in and around Northern Ireland spanned a period of 30 years (1968 - 1998) and claimed the lives of over 3,500 people across the sectarian divide. The impact of the conflict was far reaching with some suggesting that almost 1 in 3 people were affected indirectly. Since the onset of a peace process, one that remains unfinished, issues pertaining to the legacy of the conflict and how best to address the needs of victims and survivors, have dominated academic and practitioner discourse. Despite much by way of blue sky thinking, there has been an inability to implement a programme that addresses the diverse needs of those who were impacted. Within the myriad options for dealing with the past there is little to no mention of those who were violently displaced as a result of the onset of the conflict itself. In fact, the issue is almost completely absent from scholarly analysis of the 'troubles'. This is particularly surprising when one considers that somewhere in the region of 65,000 people were forced to leave their homes as a direct result of violence or intimidation; at the time considered the largest movement of people in Europe since the Second World War. This project, ongoing since 2016, seeks to recover the narratives of these forgotten victims who were displaced, giving them a platform in the debates around dealing with Northern Ireland's past. It is a direct response to existing academic projects that overlook this aspect of victimhood in favour of more procedural based, fiscal responses to conflict transformation. Through a mix of creative methodologies (including semi-structured interviews, artistic representations of displacement, and documentary film) the research engages with both those who were victims and those who were victim makers, when it comes to better understanding the longterm impact of violent displacement.

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