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The US president, Joe Biden, is expected in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland next week to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. His visit will be one of historic symbolism and of personal significance, as an Irish Catholic president who has spoken proudly of his ties to the country.
A few weeks ago, the UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, formally invited Biden to come to Northern Ireland to mark the anniversary of the peace deal, which the US helped broker. The UK has much work to do to repair relations with the US following the Trump-Johnson years, especially if they are to pursue a much desired trade deal that has been stymied partly due to US concerns about the safety of the Good Friday Agreement post-Brexit.
The four-day visit comes at a fragile time for the agreement, threatened by post-Brexit trade arrangements and political tensions in Northern Ireland. Power-sharing in the Northern Ireland assembly – a key feature of the Good Friday Agreement – has been in limbo for over a year, due to a boycott by the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). In a recent poll, a majority of Northern Irish unionists said they would vote against the agreement if a referendum were held today.
Read more: Rishi Sunak's Brexit deal: how the Stormont brake could block new EU laws from Northern Ireland
The visit has other historical symbolism and personal relevance for the US president. Biden will spend three days in the Republic of Ireland. For that part of the island, the visit will be less about Northern Ireland issues, and more around the historically resonant imagery of an Irish Catholic president returning to his roots.
There is a long history of US presidents visiting Ireland. It is thought that 23 of the 46 presidents have been of Irish heritage. Until the early 1960s, most visits were by former presidents whose families originated in Northern Ireland.
In 1963, John F. Kennedy became the first sitting – and first Irish Catholic – president to visit. His sojourn was widely viewed as a symbolic homecoming. Both Irish and American media at the time described it as a “sentimental journey”. Biden, the second Irish Catholic US president, will stir memories of Kennedy.
Biden will spend time visiting his ancestral home and meeting family in County Louth and County Mayo. He is clearly proud of his Irish roots, often referencing how his family history has shaped his political career and worldview. As he wrote in 2016: “Northeast Pennsylvania will be written on my heart. But Ireland will be written on my soul.”
Biden has knowingly taken on the Kennedy mantle as a politician. Over the years he has come to personify a liberal politics of empathy, in which his Irish ancestry and Catholicism function as moral touchstones. However, this can shroud an underlying reality, that Ireland and the US are increasingly adrift, out of sync on matters political and cultural.
At the same time, Irish America is ageing and growing more conservative, with very few new emigrants refuelling it. Biden represents a disappearing figure, the last of a once powerful tribe of liberal Irish American politicians.
Biden’s visit should not be understood as purely a sentimental journey. Indeed, looking back we can see that Kennedy’s visit was much more of a diplomatic mission than many viewed it in 1963.
Kennedy visited Ireland on his return from Berlin, after giving one of the most important speeches of the Cold War. His engagement with Ireland at that time aligned the controversially neutral state with the forces of “freedom”. And behind the scenes, a good deal of diplomatic and economic business was carried out that would benefit Ireland’s relations with the US for years to come.
As with Kennedy’s visit, economic diplomacy will be important, most obviously in the promise of US investment in Northern Ireland to reward and secure the new EU-UK deal on Brexit.
It is also a chance for Biden to repair the US’s global reputation for leadership in liberal internationalism, which has been on the back foot since the Trump administration.
Biden views the Good Friday Agreement as a significant achievement of US foreign policy, and one that enjoys bipartisan support in the US. To celebrate it today is to assert the US’s support for the rule of law in foreign policy, and promote the agreement as a model of peace for other post-conflict states. He’ll receive a warm welcome, but like Kennedy, the visit is something more than just sentimental.
Liam Kennedy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
There are few sights more joyful than a dog bounding through the countryside. But for ground-nesting birds and other wildlife, the experience is quite different.
Letting a dog off its lead can disturb several species without the owner even noticing. And with spring and summer approaching, the breeding season for a vast array of wildlife, some environmental charities are urging people to keep their dogs under control and to stick to paths when walking in nature reserves.
The law already obliges dog owners in the UK to keep their pets on a lead no longer than two metres between March 1 and July 31 when on land with public right of access.
To be clear, the destruction of habitats as a result of changes in how the land is used, including intensive farming and road building, is a far greater cause of wildlife decline than anything the average dog is capable of.
But birds which build their nests and incubate eggs on the ground, such as curlews, yellowhammers and skylark, are put at greater risk of losing their offspring as a result of being disturbed.
A dog bursting through the undergrowth of a woodland or lolloping through tall grass on a moorland can flush out and frighten adult birds incubating their eggs in well-hidden nests.
The unguarded eggs and chicks are an easy target for predators, but even if they escape becoming a fox’s next meal, they may be abandoned. While certainly not the biggest threat to wildlife, your overly enthusiastic dog is another risk to the viability of eggs and chicks during a critical time of year.
The vulnerability of ground-nesting birds is reflected in statistics. Around 66% of ground-nesting species are in decline in the UK, compared to 31% of species which don’t nest on the ground, such as robins and blackbirds.
The energy that nesting birds use up to flee their nest can be considerable, especially if they are already under stress from having laid eggs. This may make them more vulnerable to disease or being eaten themselves. Research shows that birds are less likely to nest near trails in grasslands as a result.
The modern landscape, with its matrix of intensive farms, conifer plantations and roads, favours generalist predators such as foxes and crows which can swoop in and gobble up abandoned eggs and chicks. Although the exact causes of any species’ decline can be difficult to pinpoint, one study demonstrated that a leading cause of the low survival rate of curlew chicks was fox predation.
A crow, noticing a disturbance created by a person and their dog, can locate a nest when they otherwise wouldn’t have spotted it. Crows also appear to be more tolerant of these kinds of disturbances and will return to a site quicker than other species.
Although the impact on ground-nesting birds is unintended, disturbance by dogs during the breeding season is one threat to wildlife that people can easily prevent. Try letting your dog run free on fields or parks away from wild margins where birds may be nesting.
Ground-nesting birds are in a perilous state in the UK and across Europe. All possible efforts should be made to prevent them declining further, including keeping dogs on leads in spring and summer. Giving these species the best possible chance to maximise the number of healthy chick they produce is one way you can help.
Don’t let your dog jump in ponds. Not only can this disturb the fish and amphibians living there but chemicals in your dog’s flea treatment can poison the water.
Always pick up after your dog. High levels of phosphorous and nitrogen in dog poo can over-fertilise the ground and disrupt the ecology of a habitat, as well as spread disease.
Cats kill a lot of wildlife. Try to keep them indoors, but failing that, add a bell to their collar to warn potential prey.
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Barry John McMahon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
It didn’t take long for Syria’s Assad regime to seek political and economic benefit from the devastation of an earthquake. As emergency services were reaching victims of the 7.8-magnitude tremor on February 6, regime-linked organisations demanded governments “immediately end the siege and unilateral coercive economic sanctions imposed on Syria and its people for 12 years”.
Long-time supporters of the Assad line were just as prompt. Rania Khalek, a commentator on pro-Assad and Russian state-linked outlets, tweeted: “Syria has to deal with this horrific disaster while under US sanctions that have ruined its medical sector and capacity to respond, these sanctions are criminal.”
Meanwhile, the regime threatened to block any assistance to opposition-held areas of northwest Syria, with its UN ambassador, Bassam Sabbagh insisting that Damascus must oversee all deliveries into Syria.
The UN’s resident Syria coordinator, El-Mostafa Benlamlih, appealed: “Put politics aside and let us do our humanitarian work. We can’t afford to wait and negotiate. By the time we negotiate, it’s done, it’s finished.”
The sanctions over the regime’s deadly 12-year repression of its citizens date to April 29 2011, six weeks after authorities detained and abused teenage boys daubing graffiti in Daraa in southern Syria, sparking a popular uprising. Then US president, Barack Obama, ordered a block on the property of those involved in human rights violations.
The European Union and Canada followed in May, with travel bans and asset freezes on individuals and prohibition of the export of goods and technology that could be used by the regime’s armed forces. In August, Washington expanded sanctions to cover the oil sector and to prohibit any export of goods from the US to Syria.
The US blacklisted regime figures connected with Assad’s chemical weapons program after sarin and chlorine attacks that killed or wounded thousands of civilians. In 2019, Washington toughened the measures with the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act. Prompted by photographs of 6,785 detainees, most of them tortured to death in the regime’s prisons, the Act aimed at industries related to infrastructure, military maintenance, and energy production.
But the US, European, and international sanctions included exemptions for humanitarian aid. In November 2021, after reports from NGOs about obstacles to their operations, the US Treasury expanded its general license to “facilitate legitimate humanitarian activity while continuing to deny support to malicious actors”.
As the European Union extended its measures in May 2022, it reiterated that “the export of food, medicines or medical equipment are not subject to EU sanctions, and a number of specific exceptions are foreseen for humanitarian purposes”.
Aid has been delivered to Damascus throughout the uprising despite the ongoing repression, but much of it has wound up in the pockets of the Assad regime and its cronies. A review of 779 UN procurement entries for 2019-2020 found that, with manipulation of exchange rates, the regime diverted US$100 million (£83 million). Other funds were taken from NGOs operating in regime-controlled areas.
Human Rights Watch and the Syrian Legal Development Programme summarised that the Syria case showed how UN agencies were exposed “to significant reputational and actual risk of financing abusive actors and/or actors that operate in high-risk sectors without sufficient safeguards”.
Despite this, the European Union accepted the request of the regime for assistance under the EU Civil Protection Mechanism. An initial €3.5 million (£3.1 million) was allocated for access to “shelter, water and sanitation, and health various items” as well as support of search-and-rescue operations.
Germany followed with the announcement of an additional €26 million in humanitarian assistance, and the UK with £3 million.
On Thursday, the US Treasury announced an extension of the licence for humanitarian aid “to make very clear that US sanctions in Syria will not stand in the way of lifesaving efforts for the Syrian people”.
The most daunting barrier to international aid has long been erected around the opposition-controlled areas in northwest Syria. In 2014, the UN authorised four cross-border posts for aid operations, two from Turkey into northwest Syria and two from Iraq into the northeast.
By 2022, Russia’s veto in the UN security council had reduced the four posts to one, the Bab al-Hawa crossing from Turkey into Idlib province. Had it not been for the politics around Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the Russians might have shut down that last post in January, cutting off 4 million people from any access to assistance.
In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, the route from Turkey to Bab al-Hawa was badly damaged. Turkish authorities had to grant permission but were “completely overwhelmed with dealing and helping their own people”. The UN hesitated to use other crossings amid the past objections of the Assad regime and Russia.
As a result, the first movement of aid – six trucks with tents and hygiene products – only reached northwest Syria on Thursday morning, more than 72 hours after the earthquake.
With rescuers relying on old cranes, pickaxes, and shovels, the head of the White Helmets civil defence organisation, Raed al-Saleh, said: “The UN are not delivering the aid that we are in most need of to help us save lives, with time running out.”
Political economist Karam Shaar of the Middle East Institute summarised on Twitter: “The groaning of the thousands trapped under the rubble has ceased over the past few hours. Why didn’t the UN drop aid? Because they need permission from Damascus: the same Damascus that has been bombing them day and night.”
Meanwhile, as the death toll climbs in both Assad and opposition-controlled areas of Syria, the political drumbeat from Damascus goes on. The regime’s foreign minister, Feisal Mikdad, meeting a senior UN official on Thursday, proclaimed without any apparent irony: “The western politicisation of the humanitarian assistance is unacceptable.”
Scott Lucas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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