The genocidal attack on Gaza isn't just fought with weapons; it's fought with money. Every penny to Belfast City council (rates, events in the Waterfront & Titanic, employee wages, etc.) goes through Barclays Bank, which is profiting from the genocide, and handling Israeli war bonds. Barclays Bank holds the tender for Belfast City Council banking services, and we call on the Council to take its money, your money, elsewhere. Since October 2023, Israel has raised nearly $20 billion through government bonds, explicitly stating it's for the war. Major financial institutions, including Barclays and the Central Bank of Ireland, have played a direct role in this, facilitating the sale of these bonds as ‘primary dealers’. And investors, like Allianz, have poured in hundreds of millions of dollars. We need to ask ourselves: what are the ethical implications of profiting from bloodshed and conflict?

This year - 2024 - marked 26 years since the signing of the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement - which ended the conflict in Northern Ireland which took over 3720 lives, and injured 47,541 people.  Most of the deaths were of civilian people. Despite people here voting overwhelmingly for peace, illegal loyalist paramilitary groups remain present and active in many communities, causing misery and harm to people and preying on those impacted by economic hardship. It is widely acknowledged that elements of loyalist paramilitaries were involved in the racist riots that swept Belfast in August this year. This can no longer stand. We call on the NI Executive to do all in it's power to ensure that the commitment set out in New Decade, New Approach to ending the harm done by paramilitarism is acted on with urgency.  We reject the suggestion made by Gordon Lyons that those seeking to call the DUP to account for their meetings with the Loyalist Communities Council are displaying 'faux outrage'.  We are not the problem.  Seeking to normalise paramilitary groups having influence over our elected politicians is.

 To ensure Victims and survivors of sexual trauma are protected during the Court process, also to dispell prevelant rape myths throughout our society that good character means someone is not capable of rape, or that they should be treated with leniency.