evidence: Northern Ireland’s modern period of conflict started in the late 1960s and lasted more than three decades. What started as a civil rights movement—Catholics protesting what they saw as discrimination by Northern Ireland’s Protestant-dominated government—deteriorated into violence, with the involvement of paramilitary groups on both sides and the arrival in 1969 of the British Army. The conflict involved mostly Protestant loyalists, who wanted to remain part of the UK, against mostly Catholic republicans, who wished to unite with the Republic of Ireland. Protestant unionists and Catholic nationalists shared their respective communities’ goals but tended to eschew violence. [...] The agreement called for the devolution of authority over certain policy areas from the UK Parliament to a newly created assembly in Belfast, and it paved the way for paramilitary groups to abandon their weapons and join the political process. It has contributed to a sharp reduction in violence, and the annual conflict-related death toll, which peaked at 480 in 1972, has dropped to the single digits in recent years.