16:50 - 18:30
PS10
Room:
Room: Terrace 2A
Panel Session 10
Mohammad Mohsin Hussain - Understanding Political Apologies (or their lack thereof)
Celestino Perez - The Positional Problem in Civil Wars
Andrew Sanders - The Necropolitics of Peacebuilding: Military Amnesty after the Northern Ireland Troubles
The Necropolitics of Peacebuilding: Military Amnesty after the Northern Ireland Troubles
PS10-3
Presented by: Andrew Sanders
Andrew Sanders
Texas A&M University San Antonio
Necropolitics, as described by Achille Mbembe, is the sovereign’s “capacity to dictate who may live and who must die.” In its delineation of which bodies can be killed and which bodies must not be killed, necropolitics is the framework through which governments assign value to human life that justifies killing in the name of the greater good. In July 2021 the UK government proposed a sweeping statute of limitations to all offences related to the Northern Ireland conflict. The UK government is accused of drawing an arbitrary line under the Northern Ireland conflict and sweeping aside the concerns of victims and their families. Engaging recent historical prosecutions and the proposed military amnesty, this panel looks at the role that military amnesty plays in maintaining necropolitical organizations. Specifically, we discuss the ways in which such amnesty works to reaffirm antagonistic relations between peacebuilding parties despite claims that it is a reconciliatory measure. Using the case study of the British Army in Northern Ireland, we consider historical approaches to military prosecutions by the UK state alongside current proposals for amnesty over all homicides committed in Northern Ireland prior to the 1998 Good Friday agreement through a necropolitical lens. We interrogate the ways in which these calls for amnesty remain under the same necropolitical organization that facilitated the Troubles to begin with and maintain narratives that Other Northern Ireland from Britain.