Forum for Peace and Reconciliation

The Forum for Peace and Reconciliation (Irish: an Fóram um Shíocháin agus Athmhuintearas) was a forum established by the government of Ireland in October 1994 as part of the Northern Ireland peace process.

The Forum was envisaged in paragraph 11 of the Downing Street Declaration of December 1993:

Preparations for the forum were triggered by the ceasefires announced in September 1994 by the republican Provisional IRA and loyalist UVF and UDA, whose associated political parties were thus invited to the forum.Sinn Féin accepted, while the loyalist PUP and UDP rejected, as did the mainstream unionist UUP and DUP. The presence of Sinn Féin alongside constitutional nationalist and centrist parties was considered a significant "confidence building measure"; substantive negotiations involving the unionist parties and the British government would not being till the following year. The British ambassador was invited to the opening of the forum, but there was no other British involvement. Its terms of reference were:

The forum's structure was modelled on the New Ireland Forum of 1983–84. It was chaired by Catherine McGuinness, then a judge of the Circuit Court, and had a secretariat with six members. . McGuinness' Protestant background was hoped to encourage unionist engagement with the forum. It first met in Saint Patrick's Hall in Dublin Castle on 28 October 1994. It had 41 plenary sessions and commissioned several reports, and subcommittees began drafting responses to the reports. After the publication of the Joint Framework Document in February 1995, this became the focus of much of the Forum's deliberations.

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