By Amanda Ferguson
BELFAST (Reuters) - Twenty-nine women from political and civic society were honoured on Monday at an event to mark 25 years of Northern Ireland's Good Friday Agreement that former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said would not have been possible without them.
Clinton, the chancellor of Queen's University Belfast who in her time as Secretary of State worked with the political parties in implementing the deal, praised the recipients of medals and honorary degrees as "determined, unstoppable forces for peace".
They included the late Mo Mowlam - Britain's first female minister for the region who played a key role in the talks while being treated for a brain tumour - and the founders of Northern Ireland Women's Coalition, who formed their own political party in 1996 in order to participate in the peace negotiations.
"A quarter century of bloodshed and strife and millennia of embedded sexism had discouraged most women from being in politics, from being in the arena, but not them," Clinton said opening the conference where current and former Irish, British and EU leaders will speak over the coming three days.
"There wouldn't be a Good Friday agreement to celebrate today if it were not for the women of Northern Ireland," Clinton said, to applause from the audience.
The peace accord largely ended 30 years of violence between mainly Catholic nationalist opponents and mainly Protestant unionist supporters of British rule. The administration of former U.S. President Bill Clinton helped broker the deal.
Other recipients included Ireland's first female president, Mary Robinson, Northern Ireland's first female first minister, Arlene Foster and Lyra McKee, a journalist who was killed in 2019 during an outbreak of the sporadic violence that still exists.
"I was amazed that my name was among such an illustrious group of women," Avila Killmurray, a co-founder of the Women's Coalition, said at the ceremony.
"However it's really nice because I worked mainly with women in local communities and I think very often their contribution over the years doesn't go recognised enough."