The “right to life” is arguably one of the most important human rights. Without life nothing else can follow. As war is one of the greatest threats to life, peace and peace-making, and therefore is an important remedy to human rights abuses. In this context, I have used public opinion research to advance the causes of peace and peace-making for the past 25 years, with a notable success in Northern Ireland in the 1990s.
In Northern Ireland, the forced segregation of Catholic and Protestant children in segregated schools helped fuel the conflict. The local political and religious establishment strongly opposed integrated schools, seeing them as a threat to the status quo. But most parents understood this, so by using public opinion research to air the opinion of the “silent moderate majority”—that exists in nearly all societies—it was possible to advance the cause and rights of Catholic and Protestant children to be educated together.
As early as in 1968, public opinion polls were reporting that a significant percentage of the population wanted their children to go to integrated schools—from a low of 30% to a high of 70%. However, by the mid 1990s, at the height of the conflict, only 2% of these children were in integrated schools.
