Northern Ireland is the smallest and youngest of the four nations of the United Kingdom: it occupies the north-east of the island of Ireland, over some 14,000 square kilometres, and has just over 1.9 million people. Born in 1921 from the partition of Ireland, it lived through thirty years of conflict, the Troubles, ended by the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, and today it is a land at peace, with spectacular scenery and a society still marked by the divide between two communities but increasingly open. It is the only part of the UK with a land border with the European Union. The capital is Belfast.
Geography
At the centre of the region lies Lough Neagh, the largest lake in the British Isles, at almost 400 square kilometres, sadly hit in recent years by serious toxic algal blooms caused by farm pollution. Around it alternate green hills, moors and mountains: the Mourne Mountains in the south-east, which sweep down to the sea, the Sperrins in the north-west, the Glens of Antrim and the lakes of Fermanagh in the south-west. The north coast is one of the most beautiful in Europe, with the Giant's Causeway, formed by some forty thousand basalt columns, a UNESCO site. The climate is oceanic, mild and wet.
History in brief
In the 17th century the English crown colonised Ulster with Protestant settlers from England and Scotland, the so-called Plantation, creating a population divided between Catholics of Irish origin and Protestants of British origin. When Ireland won independence in 1921, six of Ulster's nine counties, with a Protestant majority, remained in the UK with their own parliament. For decades the unionist government discriminated against the Catholic minority, and in the late 1960s the civil rights movement gave way to the Troubles: from 1969 to 1998 clashes between republican and loyalist paramilitaries and British security forces claimed more than 3,500 lives. London imposed direct rule in 1972. The peace process led to the Good Friday Agreement of 10 April 1998, approved by referendums on both sides of the border. See the history of Northern Ireland and the Irish question.
Institutions and politics
Northern Ireland is governed by an Assembly of 90 members, sitting at Stormont in Belfast, and by an Executive based on mandatory power-sharing between unionists and nationalists: the First Minister and deputy First Minister have equal powers and must come from the two communities. The institutions have been suspended several times, most recently from 2022 to 2024 over tensions linked to Brexit. Since February 2024 the First Minister has been Michelle O'Neill of Sinn Féin, the first nationalist in the region's history, alongside Emma Little-Pengelly of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). The 1998 Agreement provides that Northern Ireland may join the Republic of Ireland if a majority of its people so wish in a referendum. The territory is divided into six historic counties and, since 2015, eleven districts.
Society and identity
The divide between the unionist community, mostly Protestant and attached to the UK, and the nationalist community, mostly Catholic and in favour of Irish unification, still shapes daily life: neighbourhoods, schools and sports teams are often separate, and in Belfast the "peace walls" still stand. But society is changing: at the 2021 census Catholics outnumbered Protestants for the first time, and the number of people who identify with neither bloc is growing.
People born in Northern Ireland are entitled to both British and Irish citizenship, and many hold both passports; Irish and Ulster Scots are recognised languages.
Economy and Brexit
The Northern Irish economy rests on a large public sector, agri-food, aerospace, technology and cybersecurity, tourism and film production, such as Game of Thrones, largely filmed here. Incomes are below the UK average. In the 2016 referendum the region voted 56% to remain in the European Union; to avoid checks on the border with the Republic of Ireland, the Protocol and then the Windsor Framework kept Northern Ireland in the EU single market for goods, with some checks on goods arriving from Great Britain. See Brexit and Northern Ireland.
What to visit
Belfast with Titanic Belfast and the murals, the Causeway Coastal Route with the Giant's Causeway, the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge, Dunluce Castle and the Bushmills distillery, the walled city of Derry/Londonderry, the Mourne Mountains, the Fermanagh lakes and Armagh, St Patrick's city, seat of Ireland's Catholic and Anglican archbishops.