Built in 1968 by the British army to separate the pro-Ireland republicans from pro-UK loyalists at the outset of decades of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, the 14-metre (46-foot) metal structure still standing today is covered in graffiti.
And the wall, an enduring symbol of the divisions that have continued to plague the province despite the end of the conflict in 1998, has become a sombre tourist attraction.
"I didn't realise there were so many walls still standing, definitely not 25 years later," Lori Castillo, an American tourist, told AFP as she smiled and signed her name on the wall.
The wall is one of 75 in Belfast, which collectively stretch eight miles (13 kilometres) in length.
In 2013, Northern Ireland's devolved government set itself a 10-year deadline to tear down the walls.
But the goal, opposed by residents who say they still need the physical and psychological protection given by the barriers, remains far out of reach.
"They are still a safety mechanism for people," said Ian Shanks, head of Action for Community Transformation, which works to reintegrate former loyalist paramilitary fighters.
Michael Culbert, an ex-paramilitary member imprisoned for 16 years for killing British soldiers who now helps rehabilitate former republican prisoners while offering tours of west Belfast, noted there "could be lots of reasons" for their perceived need.
"They don't maybe trust the peace process," said the former member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA).
- 'My enemy' -
According to Rob McCallum, a Catholic association leader in an area of north Belfast where the two communities interface, there was "never a plan in place" to remove the walls.
His job is to try to build mutual trust, he explained, because in a segregated community, "you may grow up thinking all the people on the other side are my enemy."
In Belfast's modern centre, loyalist Protestant and republican Catholic communities mix freely.
But in a patchwork of working-class areas across the city, communities can live side by side but completely segregated.
Streets meet an abrupt end where they run into one of the barriers.
Gates are opened within their structures to allow movement during the day, but close at fixed times in the evening until early morning.
And while families that have lived with the walls for generations pay them little notice, they inevitably impede mobility.
"If something happens, say after nine o'clock, you can't just get through the other community to the hospital," criminal justice expert Jonny Byrne said.
"You have to travel the whole way around."
According to Byrne, the walls have become "magnets for violence and social disorder".
In April 2021, they served as flashpoints in Belfast for clashes between the communities as tensions over post-Brexit trade rules boiled over.
"Particularly young people, if they're looking to engage in what we've often called recreational rioting, they will come to points here where they can get a reaction from (the) other community," Byrne said.
- 'Twin track' -
McCallum explained that while some want the walls dismantled, others remain stuck psychologically "20 or 30 years ago, depending on the impact that the troubles had on them".
Failure to remove the walls is a legacy of "missed opportunities", Byrne said.
"The communities where the walls exist are some of the most socially deprived in Northern Ireland. They have been the most affected by the conflict and yet they haven't seen some of the big benefits," he added.
The Ulster University expert said the lack of real benefit since 1998 to working-class communities compared to the rest of society had created a "twin-track peace process".
In Belfast, 97 percent of social housing remains segregated along community lines.
Shanks said pro-UK unionists had not "reaped benefits from the Good Friday Agreement" of 1998.
"We were told... local communities would thrive, major investment would be put into them and we'd have this great kind of loop and sadly that hasn't materialised," he said.
Many unionists, he explained, would not be celebrating the 25th anniversary of the peace agreement and many from the community who voted for it then would not vote for it now -- "and that would be very worrying".
N.Ireland to mark 25 years since Good Friday Agreement
Belfast (AFP) March 31, 2023 -
Northern Ireland will in the coming month mark the 25th anniversary of peace accords which largely ended three decades of devastating sectarian conflict amid mounting political tensions and security concerns.
On April 10, 1998 -- Easter Good Friday -- pro-Irish nationalist and pro-UK unionist leaders struck an unlikely peace deal following marathon negotiations involving governments in London, Dublin and Washington.
But as the province approaches the milestone of a quarter century of peace, the mood is one of pragmatic reflection rather than celebration.
"The great hopes of '98 definitely have not been met," Duncan Morrow, professor of politics and conflict resolution at Belfast's Ulster University, told AFP.
"On the other hand, very few people are suggesting that life before the agreement was better than after."
Power-sharing institutions created by the peace accords have been left paralysed for more than a year over bitter disagreements on post-Brexit trade that show no sign of abating.
And in the wake of an assassination attempt on a police officer by dissident republicans in February, Northern Ireland's terror threat level was this week raised to "severe".
Over the coming weeks, Belfast is due to host a series of events with serving and former international heads of state and government to mark the formal end of the conflict which claimed the lives of 3,500 people.
- 'Always a process' -
In March, US President Joe Biden accepted an invitation from British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to take part in events for the anniversary.
The US leader is expected to visit both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland during his trip.
From April 17, Queen's University Belfast will hold a three-day conference hosted by former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, whose husband, Bill Clinton, played a pivotal role in securing the peace deal as US president from 1993 to 2001.
Events will focus on the transformation in Northern Ireland over the last quarter century.
In the years after the agreement was signed, Northern Ireland's paramilitaries were disarmed, its militarised border dismantled and British troops departed.
In an interview with AFP ahead of the latest anniversary, former Irish prime minister Bertie Ahern, who was instrumental in negotiating the accords, contrasted the recent period of peace with what had come before.
"It was always a process, and the last 25 years have been so much more pleasant and so much more comforting than the previous 25 or maybe the previous 75," Ahern said.
But the peace in Northern Ireland is perhaps more precarious in 2023 than it has been at any other point since the 1998 signing of the Good Friday Agreement.
- Brexit woes -
The pro-UK Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) has boycotted Northern Ireland's devolved government for more than 13 months in opposition to post-Brexit trading rules there, crippling the assembly and its executive.
Sporadic violence has erupted in unionist communities in the years since the UK's departure from the European Union, over the so-called Northern Ireland Protocol.
They fear that it pulls the province away from the UK and makes a united Ireland -- the goal of pro-Irish nationalists -- more likely.
In an intervention earlier this month, former British prime minister Tony Blair, who also contributed to reaching the deal, said Brexit was "a difficult circle to square" when it came to Northern Ireland and urged progress restoring power-sharing.
A renegotiation of parts of the protocol by the EU and UK -- labelled the Windsor Framework -- largely aimed at remedying unionist concerns has so far been spurned by the DUP.
In January, polling for The Belfast Telegraph newspaper found a majority of unionists would vote against the Good Friday Agreement in a contemporary re-run of the 1998 referendum that ratified the deal.
Last month's attempted murder of police officer John Caldwell, who was shot multiple times as he left a sports complex with his son, united Northern Ireland's political leaders in condemnation.
But the attack in Omagh, claimed by republican dissidents, has served as a stark reminder of the kind of violence that was once commonplace across the province.
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