ABSTRACT
This chapter emphasises how human rights violations assisted the descent into violence and how this descent into violence in its turn exacerbated human rights violations. It highlights how in parallel with the human rights abuses, violence and focus on self-determination, human rights maintained some of its role in the political agenda. A related concern was the treatment and status of detainees and prisoners. The prisoners themselves claimed that they had a right to special category status and to these specific privileges on the basis that they were imprisoned on the basis of their political beliefs. The negotiations leading to the Sunningdale Agreement included the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, representatives of the Ulster Unionist Party, the SDLP and the Alliance Party. The issue of human rights did appear in the Sunningdale Agreement as part of the Tripartite talks between the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland and the Northern Ireland parties who were to become members of the power-sharing Executive.
