The Good Friday

The center for Cross Border Studies was formed in September 1999 as an independent, charitable organization. This organization is supported by two core pillars of politics: the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and the EU Cohesion Policy.

According to the mission of this center is to empower citizens and build capacity and capability for cross-border mobility and cooperation across sectors and jurisdictional boundaries on the island of Ireland and further afield. In addition, the organization makes connections between government departments in the two jurisdictions, between sectors such as health, education, etc., within each jurisdiction and between community organizations and policy and decision-makers within each jurisdiction, and between the two jurisdictions.

Also, some of the work that they do is organizing policy seminars on CBC (Cross Border cooperation’s) issues in the Irish Parliament, Northern Ireland Assembly, and in Brussels. They work involves providing written and oral evidence to parliamentary committees and this means to respond to consultations.

Apart from this, their job in Good Friday is mostly related to strand two (North/South Ministerial Council) and strand three British-Irish Council, British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference. Strand two is about cooperation between Norther Ireland and Republic of Ireland about education, environment, and all sort of issues. And the main form of discussion is the North/South Ministerial Council where the two ministers of north and south meet to talk about cooperation between them.

The strand three, is about cooperation between all the administrations of the islands and the British-Irish Council brings together all the governments.

The Good Friday sets down something important, all these strands are interdependent, and this means that if one strand doesn’t work the other strands will not too.

Besides this, talking about the cross-border mobility almost 20% of the population of the island of Ireland is resident in the Ireland-Northern Ireland border region. Also, almost 20% of registered business are in the border region.

All things considered, the center for Cross Border Studies is now working with other organizations to project North-South and East-West relation and cooperation and also meeting with UK Government, European Commission and Irish Government and others.

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