Examination of Witnesses (Questions 107-119)
MS AVILA
KILMURRAY AND
DR DUNCAN
MORROW
9 FEBRUARY 2005
Q107 Chairman: Good afternoon, both of
you. Hello again, Dr Morrow. We have a very tight schedule so
do not be offended when I say can we have brief answers, Dr Morrow
in particular. I do not want to offend anybody but he has got
form in front of this Committee! Let us be as sharp as we can.
First of all, would you just give us a quick description of your
main work with victims and victims' groups. If I ask Avila Kilmurray
to start, she will set a brief example, which Dr Morrow will follow.
Ms Kilmurray: Okay, I will be
brief. The Community Foundation originally worked with victims
when it administered the first peace programme starting in 1995
and we administered a measure for a forum peace programme which
included victims in a number of other categories. During the end
of that period we were concerned at the end of the Peace One Programme
in terms of the continuity of funding for victims' groups and
we worked with the Northern Ireland Office at the time to draw
up the core funding for victims' measure. We drafted the outline
for that and since that time that measure is now administered
by the Community Relations Council but since that time we have
been administering the victims' measure under the Peace Two funding,
which is due to end in 2006.
Q108 Chairman: Does the fact that the
victims and survivors' work may be politicised undermine the effectiveness
of that work?
Ms Kilmurray: It does undermine
the effectiveness of that work.
Q109 Chairman: In what ways?
Ms Kilmurray: I think it has been
very divisive within the victims' groupings, particularly since
1998, have tended to be formed (political self-help groups) around
different political identities down to different political party
identities and that, I think, has been divisive. I think it has
probably been inevitable, but it has been difficult and it is
quite interesting because I have been working personally in this
since 1995. Between 1995 and 1998 only three elected representatives
contacted me about victims' issues. Since the Belfast Agreement
it seems to have been one of the issues that almost has been used
as a pseudo-negotiation approach.
Q110 Chairman: Okay. Is it getting better
or worse, the politicisation?
Ms Kilmurray: The politicisation
is still there, but in fairness I think that with regard to the
people involved in the victims' groups themselves it is actually
still very raw but it is getting better because I actually can
see movement as they themselves start getting support, that they
are going beyond just hitting out at everybody else and actually
starting to look at the needs of their own constituency. I think
that is very important in terms of reaching out to victims who
may not have had any support in the past.
Q111 Chairman: Do you think the victims'
organisations get sufficient funding?
Ms Kilmurray: They all say they
do not.
Q112 Chairman: Well, they would.
Ms Kilmurray: In fairness, I think
there are areas of work they could do if more resources were available
because one of the things the Community Foundation raised at the
time when the Peace Two measure was being formulated. It was formulated
very specifically within the European Social Fund Regulations
for training and employment, and that was not actually the issue
that a lot of those groups wanted. A lot of the victims are actually
getting quite elderly and in many cases, in particular the rural
victims, what they needed was a sense of befriending, for people
to reach out to them, to encourage them to get involved in social
groups. In some cases we had widows, perhaps, who are now in their
seventies in a country village who had not been to Belfast for
25 years and that was the sort of work that needed to be supported,
rather than getting a qualification and getting back into a job.
Q113 Chairman: How effective do you think
the Government's policies are then towards victims?
Ms Kilmurray: I think the Government,
certainly since the Bloomfield Report, has made huge strides in
terms of reaching out to victims. I think it is a slow process.
I think there are still some victims who have never actually come
forward. For example, with all the victims we have seen we have
never had someone who has been a victim of tarring and feathering
coming forward. There are relatives of people who would have been
shot by the other side as informers. They have not very often
come forward. So we are seeing almost like different categories
of victims. Having said that, there are a lot more resources there.
There is certainly a lot more attention. But I think it is a long-term
process and one of the things that does not help with the victims'
groups is to have these like two year or three year funding programmes
because it does not allow them the continuity of planning and
strategic development.
Q114 Chairman: We all know that. That
is the way Government works. That I do not think we can change.
Do you think that the very terms themselves, "reconciliation"
and "truth recovery", are they divisive, sectarian,
different things to different sides?
Ms Kilmurray: They are certainly
different things to different sides and the Foundation about eighteen
months ago, because we fund a whole range of community-based groups
including victims and indeed ex-prisoners, we did a sort of study
and interview with them to actually try and get their response
to those terms and what came across was just a complete diversity
in terms of how they saw those terms. I think in terms of victims
and survivors (and a lot would say this) talking about reconciliation
is putting a bar too high. I actually think that we should be
starting with broader society in terms of looking at how they
were involved in the conflict, either directly or indirectly,
rather than starting with the victims because it is almost as
though we are actually guilt-tripping the victims, that they have
to be reconciled to other people, whereas perhaps people who contributed
to the whole atmosphere of the Troubles who were not directly
either injured or bereaved also have a role to play. So I think
really we should be starting from the outside institutions and
working inwards, rather than putting the pressure on the victims
who suffered most acutely for the Troubles.
Q115 Chairman: Okay. What definition
of a victim is used to decide whether an organisation should get
victims' funding?
Ms Kilmurray: We have a very simple
one and that is anyone who has been bereaved or injured in the
Troubles.
Q116 Chairman: No matter what they were
doing?
Ms Kilmurray: No matter what they
were doing. We have said we will not subscribe to the hierarchy
of victims, and indeed what we have also found—
Q117 Chairman: Just so that I am quite
clear, paramilitaries out on a mission who get shot or beaten
up, they are victims too?
Ms Kilmurray: Yes.
Q118 Chairman: So it is anybody?
Ms Kilmurray: Yes.
Q119 Chairman: Okay. Unless they were
run over by a bus. Now, that was wonderfully brief, concise and
a positive example to Dr Morrow, who is going to come up here
and hit me if I say it again! Can we try and do that in the same
amount of time.
Dr Morrow: Okay. We have in many
ways a parallel history with the Community Foundation. We were
involved with the Community Foundation in the early years in looking
at some more advances and developing this area, although the Foundation
had the lead in actually administering the grants. In 2002 we
took over as the core funder for victims and survivors' groups.
There are now 46 victims and survivors' groups core funded under
that scheme and it is a budget of £3 million. There is also
an accompanying small grants fund which is approximately £250,000
per annum, which provides programme money and support for those
self-help and therapeutic groups. They range, as Avila has said,
enormously in political orientation, in orientation towards truth,
justice, reconciliation, all of these words, and also in terms
of the services that they offer. We have, however, managed to
establish actually a very good network based on things with the
Community Foundation and in this sense we work very closely together,
where we actually bring them together to discuss core themes of
their choosing and among the things they have asked are politicised
things like truth and reconciliation, where groups of a huge variety
of names which maybe familiar to you, which include groups like
FAIR and One True Voice and on the other hand Relatives for Justice
and also groups like WAVE, who have focused on inter-community
reconciliation and also simply on helping the bereaved. Groups
of that nature all participate together. I have to say, with Avila,
the outcome is not agreement and it never will be. The outcome
is, however, that slowly, surely, there is recognition of predicament,
that everybody is caught in the predicament and the core question
is how do we collectively find a way forward. On the issue that
Avila raised about victim-centredness, the victim groups themselves,
in my experience, are slightly ambivalent on this question. On
the one hand they feel that the word "reconciliation"
puts too much on to them who have borne the most and who actually
have suffered the greatest trauma. On the other hand, there is
also a demand for a victim-centred process, by which they mean
that the interests of victims need to be central to any process
which takes place and I would venture to suggest that one of the
dangers of any process that we embark on is that the victims will
be at the centre and they will be victimised again. So I think
there is a fear that if it is overly public process that actually
they will be the ones who will suffer the most and they will not
get the truth that they wish. So that is just a concern.
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