Mythic rights and conflict-related prisoner ‘re-integration’

Abstract

This article argues that within Northern Ireland the processes of disarmament, demobilisation and re-integration (DDR) remain incomplete. Despite general disarmament and demobilisation and a very significant fall in paramilitary violence, those imprisoned as a consequence of the conflict remain marginalised by vetting laws and other instruments of civic exclusion. This has significant consequences in terms of acknowledging that the conflict has ceased as a violent/military episode. This is due to rhetorical devices and positions that uphold variant readings of the past, especially those that impose a humiliated status upon conflict-related prisoners.

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