Border Walls: Belfast, Ireland
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For much of the latter half of the 20th century, Northern Ireland tore itself apart. British Protestants, known as Loyalists, and Northern Irish Catholics, known as Nationalists, were consistently at each other’s throats. The former wanted Northern Ireland to remain part of the UK and the latter hoped the area would become part of Ireland.
Starting in the late 1960s, Northern Ireland erected walls in its capital of Belfast in order to curb the violence. Initially meant as a temporary measure, the walls proved effective enough to justify not only keeping them up, but building many more.
To this day, even after the 1998 “Good Friday” Agreement effectively ended the conflict, dozens of walls still stand in Belfast, the Guardian reports, because people are worried about the disruption that taking them down would cause — not to mention the cost.
Yet the walls have proven to be a catch 22. Foreign investment won’t come to Northern Ireland while the walls stay up, but the walls won’t come down until there is enough money and popular support to remove them. That’s not to say that they’re permanent, though: in 2013, Northern Irish leaders pledged to have all the walls down by 2023.
Malaysia and Thailand
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Both Malaysia and Thailand constructed their own walls in the 1970s, largely to decrease the incidence of smuggling and keep communist guerrillas from entering Malaysia through Thailand.
It has since been strengthened, once again in an effort to bar smugglers from bringing in untaxed goods and illegal materials.
But in building two walls, Malaysia and Thailand have created a ten meter-wide middle ground between the two countries, becoming a safe haven for smugglers and drug runners — and helping keep the two countries from building a strong symbiotic relationship.
In 2001, the two countries finally agreed to at least cooperate on scrapping the two-wall system for one single wall, which they hope will stem human trafficking and cross-border crime.
