From a Washington Post guest column by Bill Clinton headlined “Why has peace endured in Northern Ireland? Hope and history rhymed.”:

Twenty-five years ago, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern signed the Good Friday Agreement, achieving peace in Northern Ireland after three decades of sectarian violence known as the Troubles claimed more than 3,500 lives.

The April 10, 1998, agreement, approved by 71 percent of voters in the North and 94 percent in the Irish Republic, was the result of years of painstaking negotiation between parties who had long seen each other as bitter enemies, a consequence of bombings, reprisals, discrimination in work and social life, constant anxiety and fear — all leaving a dark cloud hanging over their children’s collective future.