Warning that paramilitaries are still exploiting young people more than two decades on from Good Friday Agreement

Some of the worst-affected communities are enduring residual violence and the trauma of the Troubles is still being experienced even by those who did not live through it, two academics said as Northern Ireland prepares to mark the 25th anniversary of the peace accord.

Concerns have been raised in recent times about paramilitary groups coercing young people into rioting in order to settle drug debts, with both loyalist and dissident republican groups being blamed for using the tactic to force people on to the streets.

Where such actions might have previously been labelled as recruitment, it is now being recognised as exploitation and child abuse, Dr Siobhan McAlister, from Queen's University Belfast (QUB), told the PA news agency.

The senior lecturer in criminology said: "Violence towards children is child abuse, no matter who it's carried out by, and increasingly now we're starting to frame what might once have been termed recruitment as exploitation."

She said some young people are being "manipulated and exploited by powerful individuals within their communities" who are using "situations of uncertainty or instability, feelings within communities where culture and identity might feel like they're under threat" to "legitimise their own existence and they use those to boost support and to potentially draw young people in".

Dr McAlister, who has done research in the area of young people, marginalisation and conflict legacy for more than a decade, said it is only in more recent years that the worst-affected areas have been given more focus.

She said: "It is those communities that still experience that residual violence and I guess we could say that the Good Friday Agreement in some respects never really responded to that.

"We might say that it was a missed opportunity and that communities felt left behind, and that has taken until much more recently, as I say 2015 with the Fresh Start Agreement, for there actually to be a commitment and resourcing to tackle the issue of paramilitarism in Northern Ireland."

That agreement saw the setting-up of the Independent Reporting Commission (IRC) which publishes annual reports on progress towards ending paramilitary activity.

Asked how big the problem of child exploitation by paramilitary groups is in Northern Ireland, Dr McAlister said it "fluctuates" but that "some communities talk about a pervasive presence of these groups or individuals within that community".

She said official police statistics on paramilitary style so-called punishment shootings are likely to only be the "tip of the iceberg" because "very few" of the young people in the communities where she has undertaken her research "have ever reported it or have ever come to the attention of the police".

Police Service of Northern Ireland statistics for February 2022 until January this year stated that all 26 casualties of paramilitary-style assaults during that period were aged 18 years and above.

Dr McAlister said her own and other people's research suggested that "just is not true" and that in fact there have been younger victims.

Historically, young people who are involved in unrest on the streets have been treated as perpetrators, she said, adding that "actually they're victims of exploitation and manipulation by these powerful individuals within their communities".

Dr Gillian Shorter said drug-related deaths among the so-called ceasefire generation remain a serious concern, with statistics released in November showing them to be highest among people aged 25-34 at 26.9 per 100,000 people.

The senior lecturer at QUB's school of psychology said: "People are defined by their parents' history even if they haven't lived through it, and that's even regardless of whether they talk about the past or not and we transfer - within families, across friends - ways of coping. Silence, substances, what we do with emotions that have nowhere to go."

She said while it is recognised that people use drugs for many reasons including pleasure and relaxation, they can also be used due to trauma response and coping.

She said: "It is very interesting here that we have a very specific group here in Northern Ireland that are really suffering in that sort of 25 to 39 (age group) that were either young people or coming to age around about the time the Good Friday Agreement was signed."

Dr Shorter called on politicians to "get back to Stormont", saying that unless more work is done to tackle the problem "we're going to keep passing these traumas down generation to generation".

She added: "Every day that we delay cost lives, not just in drug-related deaths, but also in suicide and mental health issues. I implore people, please get back to Stormont.

"We need to urgently respond and make good on our promises of that Good Friday Agreement because that ceasefire generation is the one that's dying."