Northern Ireland Nobel Peace Prize winner John Hume dies
- Hume, 83, was an architect of the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement which ended decades of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland
- British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has described Hume as a ‘political giant’ while former PM Tony Blair said he was a visionary
John Hume, a key Roman Catholic architect of Northern Ireland’s 1998 Good Friday peace agreement who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in ending 30 years of sectarian violence, died on Monday at the age of 83, his SDLP party said.
Hume, a veteran civil rights campaigner credited with kick-starting peace negotiations in a British region convulsed by bloodshed in the early 1990s, shared the Peace Prize with Northern Ireland’s then-first minister, David Trimble of the Protestant Ulster Unionist Party.
He died in a care home in his native Londonderry in the early hours of Monday morning, his family said.
“He stood proudly in the tradition that was totally opposed to violence and committed to pursuing his objectives by exclusively peaceful and democratic means,” Johnson said. “With his passing we have lost a great man who did so much to help bring an end to the Troubles and build a better future for all.”
