Britain’s parliament on Tuesday passed a highly controversial bill aimed at ending the violence that has rocked Northern Ireland for three decades, AFP reported.

Despite numerous critics of the text, unelected members of the House of Lords approved the government’s bill, which must now be signed by King Charles III, as a formality.

A bill introduced in May 2022 by the Conservative government proposes to abolish criminal prosecutions related to the conflict in Northern Ireland for British soldiers and paramilitary groups who choose to cooperate with the authorities.

More than 3,500 people have died during three decades of conflict in Northern Ireland between loyalists, mainly Protestants, and republicans, mainly Catholics.

Police are still investigating about 1,200 deaths, according to the British government. For London, the law should allow hundreds of these unsolved cases to be closed.

But it has been condemned by victims’ families, the entire political class of Northern Ireland and the Irish government, which has already announced it is considering legal action against the law.

The Council of Europe also recently expressed “deep concern” over the UK’s failure to resolve differences over the text.

On Tuesday, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said on X (formerly Twitter) that he “deplores” the passage of the law, “despite concerns (…) that it violates the UK’s international obligations regarding human rights”.

“We are calling for it to be reviewed and we are calling for victims’ rights to be at the heart of dealing with the legacy of the Troubles,” he added.

On the other hand, the law has always been welcomed by veterans’ associations, which believe that some soldiers have been convicted unfairly.

In November 2022, for the first time since the end of the conflict in 1998, former British soldier David Holden was given a three-year suspended sentence for shooting a man in the back at a roadblock in 1988.