A nostalgia tour or a chance to consolidate the peace in Northern Ireland? On the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement that ended decades of what was effectively sectarian civil war in an impoverished corner of Europe, a US president who is proud of his Irish Catholic heritage returns, but for less than a day in the north. Joe Biden does not want to appear to be endorsing the current gridlock in Belfast's power-sharing assembly. Twenty-five years on, peace is still a work in progress.
We ask how much has changed since a truce brokered by Washington, London, Dublin and Brussels, and what the next 25 years hold for the guarantors of the deal, as well as the people of Northern Ireland. Will the new post-Brexit trade deal help or hurt the local economy? Will the Catholic-Protestant divide fade? More broadly, what will it take to bring down the so-called peace walls erected to prevent violence between rival communities?
Produced by Charles Wente, Meiqi An and Imen Mellaz
