Belfast: Being Young in a Divided City: Belfast_BYiaDC_29

Young people participating in a cross-community project by a youth club in the Catholic Divis area in west Belfast, gather to decorate both sides of a gate between Protestant Shankill and Catholic Falls road. Every night the gate closes at 6.30pm.First built in 1969 as a temporary solution to reduce violence, the peace walls — a euphemism for segregation barriers — have increased in number and scale since the start of the peace process. The barriers take many forms: Not only walls but also fences, gates, roads and empty buffer zones divide the Catholic and Protestant communities in some of the city's most economically deprived areas. The government promised to take the barriers down by 2023, but many residents are not ready for them to come down any time soon. Not all interface areas — the common boundary between a Protestant and a Catholic area — have a physical border. Sometimes there is only an invisible dividing line that local people are aware of.

Young people participating in a cross-community project by a youth club in the Catholic Divis area in west Belfast, gather to decorate both sides of a gate between Protestant Shankill and Catholic Falls road. Every night the gate closes at 6.30pm. 

First built in 1969 as a temporary solution to reduce violence, the peace walls — a euphemism for segregation barriers — have increased in number and scale since the start of the peace process. The barriers take many forms: Not only walls but also fences, gates, roads and empty buffer zones divide the Catholic and Protestant communities in some of the city's most economically deprived areas. The government promised to take the barriers down by 2023, but many residents are not ready for them to come down any time soon. Not all interface areas — the common boundary between a Protestant and a Catholic area — have a physical border. Sometimes there is only an invisible dividing line that local people are aware of.