Legacy Project

PFC Legacy Project — Invitation to submit tender ()

The legacy project of the PFC is a SEUPB/ POBAL funded PEACE III project under

Theme 1.2: Acknowledgement and Dealing with the Past
Strand 2: Support for Participation

The Legacy Project provides an advocacy, advice and support service to families, bereaved as a result of the conflict, who wish to engage with statutory agencies to establish the facts surrounding the death/s of their loved one/s. The service, which is free of charge, is available to families on a cross community and cross border basis.

The Legacy Project will engage with the Historical Enquiries Team of the PSNI (HET) and with the Office of the Police Ombudsman in Northern Ireland. Should the British Government appointed Consultative Group on the Past recommend a new overarching body to co-ordinate all 'historic' investigations the Legacy Project would continue its advocacy, advice and support role in the context of any new Commission appointed by the two governments and any new unit appointed by the Commission.

This project aims to ensure that individual families receive the maximum permissible disclosure of information regarding the death/s of their relative/s from those statutory agencies, North and South of the border, tasked with investigating historic conflict related fatalities. In a limited number of cases there will also be engagement with the Prosecution Service, the Coroner's Service and An Garda Síochana.

The project aims to ensure that families are supported and accompanied throughout this process by staff that are skilled and experienced in liaising with the relevant statutory agencies and have developed analytical 'paralegal' skills in relation to official reports. Implicit to the advocacy and support role is an understanding that the process should provide for some level of comfort and solace for those involved. It is intended that this process will narrow the list of questions passed from generation to generation following a violent death. This in turn should lessen the impact of trans-generational trauma. A positive engagement between bereaved families and statutory agencies will contribute in time to reconciliation at a societal level as individual hurts are addressed and acknowledged.

The project is predicated on the premise that:

1. The conflict has produced a legacy that will prove destabilising and destructive to any efforts at peace building and reconciliation unless that legacy is faced openly and honestly;
2. The criminal justice system is largely inappropriate to the task of truth recovery, restorative justice and reconciliation in respect of the legacy of the conflict.

As part of our strategy to address point 1 a central focus of our work has been (and will continue to be) to research and document individual cases of conflict related loss of life following a specific request from a relative. Underpinning this is a human rights based approach which dictates that relatives have a 'right to truth' in respect of each individual loss. In respect of point 2 our engagement with statutory bodies has largely been framed within the paradigm of truth recovery as opposed to attaining evidence for criminal prosecutions.

For further background see www.seupb.eu