Agreement Reached in the Multi-Party Negotiations - Transitional ...

• ‘An academy for the creation of a professional police force shall be established.
The curriculum shall be established in accordance with human rights and
gender equality commitments. Due regard shall be given to gender balance in
the appointment of the teaching staff, and affirmative action taken to recruit
women into the police force at all levels and in all roles.’
• ‘Measures to eliminate small arms’.
• Within the police force ‘due regard shall be given to gender balance’ and
‘women police officers shall be assigned to all levels of active duty’.
9.13 Disarmament
Women seem side-lined from the larger arms issue with little input into decommissioning
or the work of the International Monitoring Commission. There is the issue of arms and
the security forces, especially the use of plastic baton rounds (plastic bullets). The
preamble of CEDAW calls for ‘general and complete disarmament’. The United Kingdom,
a party to the Convention continues, during this transitional phase, to permit the use of
plastic bullets by the security forces. In spite of 14 deaths and many serious injuries from
the use of plastic bullets no one has been convicted in respect of any of the deaths or
injuries. Compensation has been paid but no criminal charges brought. 323 The Patten
report did not call for the withdrawal of plastic bullets but recommended more
accountability, training and stricter rules. The report included the following statistics:
‘Since 1981, a total of 41,657 have been discharged by the police and 14, 572 by the army.
11 deaths have been attributed to PBRs since 1981 (and 5 before that), and 615 injuries.’
The Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition urged that ‘plastic bullets be withdrawn from
use’; 324 the Bloomfield Report 1998 recommended banning the use of plastic bullets.
9.14 In Summary
The Agreement is not gender-specific with regard to policing but is gender inclusive in that
it envisages a police force representative of the ‘community as a whole’ or the ‘society it
polices’. Community and identity, however, is primarily defined in terms of
Catholic/Nationalist and Protestant/Unionist. Both men and women are to be active
stakeholders in the new police service, especially with regard to community policing. As
stakeholders they will lend support, and ultimately it is hoped, allegiance to a police service
that is fair and impartial. Principles of human rights will be the basis of the new policing
structures and arrangements. Key issues for women were accountability, equality and
representation, and community policing.
The Patten Report, the Policing Board and the PSNI all state the need to tackle the underrepresentation
of women in policing. Yet Patten holds back from introducing a quota
system, while doing so to redress the under-representation of Catholics, possibly because
failure to co-opt males from Nationalist communities will impact on the chances of
maintaining the peace. Equality for women, set against this imperative, can wait and
happen over a longer time span. The matter was also complicated by European Union
legislation. However, dealt with as a numbers game, the approach was one-dimensional
and did not see how addressing sexism could indirectly address sectarianism. Women
could change the culture and macho image of policing. ‘Merit’ again is given credence but
323 CAJ Just News, September 2003
324 Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition, A New Beginning: Policing in Northern Ireland The Report of the
Independent Commission on Policing for Northern Ireland, A Response from the Northern Ireland
Women’s Coalition
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