Twenty-nine women from political and civic society were honored at an event to mark 25 years of Northern Ireland's Good Friday Agreement that former US 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.
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