When the Good Friday Agreement was signed in 1998, I was three years old. I was completely unaware that an historic agreement reached by politicians, and later endorsed by the people, would do so much to shape my life and change our society forever.
It bestowed on my generation in Northern Ireland the gift of hope. Hope that through dialogue and cooperation our people could acknowledge different identities, without being defined by them. Hope that we’d be aware of our divided past, but firmly focused on a common future.
It was a hope that delivered. Unlike my parents and grandparents I have no memory of violent conflict, of seeing troops on the streets or travelling through customs checkpoints to visit family and friends.
It is why last month in Dublin the US Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, described the Good Friday Agreement as ‘a beacon to the world’.
A year ago, having just finished university, I was working as a sales assistant at a store in Newry, the border city I am proud to call home.
Young people engaged in political campaigning were far more focused on human rights issues such as equal marriage or a woman’s right to a safe, free and legal abortion - rights which we still impatiently wait to be granted.
The turning point for me came in the increasingly alarming rhetoric on ‘the backstop’ and the border. Its proponents included the then UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson’s comparison of the Irish border with the boundaries of the London congestion charge.
It was made worse by the realisation that in Northern Ireland we face the greatest democratic deficit in the Western world. We are underrepresented and misrepresented at Westminster, and our politicians in Stormont hold the world record for political ineptitude.
So we began to organise and built a cross-community campaign. We were working with other youth groups across the rest of the UK and Ireland, but we were, and are, a campaign driven and shaped by our own distinct reality.
We have sought at a minimum to protect the backstop in any deal agreed, but also campaign for the final proposition to be put back to the people. One of the most important lessons of the Good Friday Agreement is that you have to give people ownership at the end of the process.
We made our arguments to politicians from all parties. Then a group of us got on a plane from Belfast to Brussels and made our case directly to Michel Barnier. Where our politicians fail to fairly represent us, we will represent ourselves.
Over the past two weeks we have been asking politicians to commit to protect our futures from Brexit. It is in response to the ramping up of rhetoric from Brexiters who now feel their 2016 mandate was for a ‘no-deal Brexit’.
The prize is a chance to impose their will on the people. That the future peace and prosperity of Northern Ireland might be the collateral damage of this is a price they are willing to pay. But it is my generation who will shoulder the cost.
Twenty-one years ago our politicians came together. The context was more grave, and the way forward less clear, than where we are today. Acting in the collective interest against those would seek to divide took great courage and leadership. More than any time since then, politicians today have a duty to the children of the peace process in Northern Ireland to do the same.
Today with Brexit it is my generation in Northern Ireland, the children of the peace process, who have the most to lose and yet we have the least say. Next week, regardless of the result, the rhetoric on “binning the backstop” will begin again.
More than any time in the past two decades, politicians from Westminster need to show courage and leadership on Northern Ireland. They must make clear that our futures are not up for negotiation. They must listen to us when we say loudly and with one voice that we cannot go back.
Doire Finn is co-founder of Our Future, Our Choice NI, a group campaigning for a second referendum