THE BRITISH and Irish governments yesterday officially dissolved the two bodies charged with overseeing paramilitary decommissioning and testing whether these groups were observing their ceasefires.
Minister for Justice Alan Shatter and Northern Secretary Owen Paterson said the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) and Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD) played a vital role in facilitating the transition from conflict to peace.
Thanking the commissioners and their staff, the Ministers said they “played a crucial part in supporting and enabling historic changes over the years, assisting in Northern Ireland’s transition to a peaceful, stable and inclusive society”.
Both organisations have presented “valedictory” reports to the British and Irish governments but these will not be published until sometime after the Assembly elections on May 5th. These reports focus on lessons learned over almost 14 years of Gen John de Chastelain’s decommissioning body, and the 7½-year history of the IMC.
The organisations played important roles in the evolving peace process. Probably the most important pronouncement was from the IICD in 2005 when it reported that the IRA had put its arsenal of weapons, explosives and ammunition beyond use in an exercise witnessed by the former president of the Methodist Church, the Rev Harold Good, and Redemptorist priest Fr Alec Reid.
It helped set in train the process whereby the DUP leader, the Rev Ian Paisley, finally accepted the bona fides of Gerry Adams and entered into powersharing government with Sinn Féin and the other main parties at Stormont in March 2007.
The body also oversaw decommissioning by the Ulster Volunteer Force, the Ulster Defence Association, the Irish National Liberation Army and the Official IRA.
The members of the IICD were Gen de Chastelain from Canada, Brig Tauno Nieminen from Finland and American diplomat Andrew Sens.
The members of the IMC were Joe Brosnan, former secretary general of the Department of Justice; Lord Alderdice, former Alliance leader and Assembly speaker; Dick Kerr, former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency; and John Grieve, former assistant commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police.
The IMC reported regularly on the actions of the various paramilitary groupings and also tested whether the British government was meeting its “normalisation” or demilitarisation commitments.
The IMC’s report in 2008 that the IRA army council was neither functional nor operational and posed no threat to constitutional politics was also an important milestone on the road to policing and justice powers being devolved.