Senior Law Lecturer: Dr Fernand de Varennes

Dr Fernand de Varennes, Senior Lecturer at the School of Law, recently returned to Murdoch after six months in Northern Ireland conducting research on ethnic conflicts.

Dr de Varennes spent this period as the 1999-2000 Tip O’Neill Fellow in Peace Studies at INCORE, the Initiative on Conflict Resolution and Ethnicity, based in Derry.

Established in 1993, INCORE is a joint initiative of the United Nations University and the University of Ulster to address the management and resolution of ethnic conflicts through research, training and other activities that inform and influence appropriate national and international organisations.

While at INCORE, Dr de Varennes focused his research on the links between the protection of minority rights and preventing ethnic conflicts.

“By discriminating against minorities, countries create environments where ethnic conflicts erupt out of anger and frustration,” explained Dr de Varennes.

“Using the example of Northern Ireland, few people would argue that the original source of conflict and subsequent violence was the denial of some of the rights for Catholics up to the late 1960s.

“In some cases at the municipal level, for example, Protestants had far greater voting rights as only two people per household could vote and the poorer Catholics often had several families under the same roof. Also, wealthy business owners (often Protestant) could vote up to 6 times each.

“The conflict which erupted less than 40 years ago has to be understood in that context of grievances based on the denial of the rights of the Catholic minority and a political system unable to respond effectively to these grievances.

“Civil rights marches where protectors carried placards saying ‘One Man One Vote’ and demanding an end to years of discrimination were but the start of a maelstrom, which eventually led to violent conflict by the 1970’s.

“When one looks at the situation today, one cannot help but be amazed that a democracy like the UK, based on the rule of law, could exclude and discriminate against the Catholic minority to the extent it did.”

In areas such as public housing or policing, although about one-third of the population was Catholic, 95 per cent of the police and civil service was Protestant.

Dr de Varennes believes that similar sorts of discrimination against minorities has been a significant cause of ethnic conflict around the world, and spent his time in Derry working on a three-volume book series on peace accords dealing with these conflicts, which will be published later this year.

After completing his fellowship at INCORE in April, Dr de Varennes presented the first Tip O’Neill Lecture at the Association for the Study of Nationalities’ 5th Annual World Convention at Columbia University, New York.

He is currently in Europe, presenting a working paper on ethnic conflict at the United Nations Working Group on the Rights of Minorities and speaking at seminars organised by the Organisation on Security and Cooperation in Europe.