Monica McWilliams

Monica McWilliams
Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly for Belfast South
In office 25 June 1998 – 26 November 2003
Preceded by	New Creation
Succeeded by	Alex Maskey
Personal details
Born	28 April 1954 (1954-04-28) (age 57)
Political party	Northern Ireland Women's Coalition
Residence	Belfast
Alma mater	Queen's University Belfast

Monica McWilliams (born 28 April 1954) is a Northern Ireland academic and former politician. From 2005 to 2011 she served as the second Chief Commissioner of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission.

McWilliams was born in Kilrea, County Londonderry and educated at Loreto College, Coleraine. She is a graduate of Queen's University Belfast and the University of Michigan, and became Professor of Women's Studies and Social Policy at the University of Ulster.^[1]

McWilliams, a Catholic residing in South Belfast, co-founded (with Pearl Sagar, a Protestant social worker from East Belfast) the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition (NIWC), a political party with a vaguely feminist platform that declined to take any position on the principal unionist/nationalist dispute. The party secured only 1.03% of the popular vote and failed to win any constituency seats in the 1996 Northern Ireland Forum elections, but was granted two seats under the 'top-up' mechanism designed to ensure the inclusion of minor parties. McWilliams took one of these seats and was thus able to attend the multi-party negotiations that led to the intergovernmental Good Friday Agreement in 1998, which her party supported (but did not, as frequently reported, 'sign').

She was elected as one of two NIWC Members of the Legislative Assembly in Northern Ireland (the other being Jane Morrice) on 25 June 1998, having secured 3,912 votes in South Belfast (9.6%). During the negotiations following the Agreement, she was the Chairperson of the Human Rights Sub-Committee until 2003. In 2001 she ran unsuccessfully for Parliament in South Belfast, securing 2,968 votes (7.8%). In the 2003 Assembly election her vote fell further, to 2,150 (6.9%), and she lost her seat to Sinn Féin. (In 2006 the NIWC ceased to exist due to declining electoral fortunes.)

McWilliams returned to her university post from 2003 until she was appointed by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland as full-time Chief Commissioner of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission in June 2005, for a three-year term. She was reappointed, for four years, in September 2008, but announced in August 2010 that she would resign her appointment in August 2011, a year before its expiry. She then returned to the University of Ulster as Professor of Women's Studies and an Associate Researcher with the Transitional Justice Institute. She had also been associated with INCORE, a joint University of Ulster and United Nations University research centre for the study of conflict.

McWilliams has co-authored two government-published research studies: Bringing It Out in the Open: Domestic Violence in Northern Ireland (1993, with Joan McKiernan) and Taking Domestic Violence Seriously: Issues for the Civil and Criminal Justice System (1996, with Lynda Spence) and has published numerous articles on the impact of political conflict. She was one of eight politicians jointly awarded the John F. Kennedy Library Profile in Courage Award in 1998.^[2] She was a joint recipient of the Frank Cousins Peace Award in 1999.^[3] She has also received honorary doctorates from Lesley College (Massachusetts) and Mount Mary College (Milwaukee).

References

1. ^ http://www.nihrc.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=20&Itemid=25
2. ^ "JFK Library announcement". http://www.jfklibrary.org/Education+and+Public+Programs/Profile+in+Courage+Award/Award+Recipients/Peacemakers+of+Northern+Ireland/Award+Announcement.htm. 
3. ^ http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/cgi/news/release?id=37539

External links

• Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission

Northern Ireland Assembly
Preceded by New creation	MLA for Belfast South 1998 - 2003	Succeeded by Alex Maskey

Persondata
Name	Macwilliams, Monica
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	28 April 1954
Place of birth
Date of death
Place of death