Unionist and nationalist communities in the North need to cast aside the notion that one suffered more than the other during the Troubles, according to the chairman of the Bill of Rights Forum.
As the Forum embarked on more detailed deliberations about what rights its should enshrine, its Australian-based chairman, Chris Sidoti, said the challenge facing six working groups it has set up was to help produce legislation which meant more than just fine words for lawyers.
The former Australian Human Rights Commissioner believed the new political climate at Stormont had created the right conditions for his body's important job which is working to a deadline of March 31st next year.
"Bills of Rights can be part of a process of nation building, building a sense of community, a vision for society," he said. "It cannot occur contrary to what is happening around it. To try and build a Bill of Rights during a period of enormous conflict, for example, is almost an impossible ask.
"It remains very much part of a process of transition from a painful past to a hopeful future. So the time is right. "I think the difficulties the Human Rights Commission encountered with all the best will in the world during the early part of 2000 just reflects how hard it is to do this job if the will is not yet there.
"To use an Australian analogy it is very much about riding a crest of a wave. If the wave is there you can jump on it and the Bill of Rights will carry you through to its completion. But if the tide is flowing in the opposite direction, you have no chance.
"The question of the past is going to arise in a number of our working groups - not just the criminal justice and victims group. The preamble group is very much going to be a part of that attempt to have a common stamp on what we have experienced here in Northern Ireland.
"That is going to be a very difficult task but one that can be of a lot of benefit to the entire community if there is some agreed understanding of the variety of experiences of human rights violation and an absolute determination - not just a commitment - that it will never happen again.
"I think a starting point is just to acknowledge there are victims. I don't think there should be a competition as to who were the greater victims. I think people throughout this community have experienced human rights violations of a very serious nature.
"The community as a whole, as a society, has suffered enormous damage and there is no better place to start is a recognition that putting aside a sense of competition and even a sense of holding onto a sense of the past will allow us to move forward.
"That can only be done - and we know this from many societies - when the past has been properly dealt with. You cannot close the door on it and pretend it never existed. The suffering of victims must be acknowledged and processes developed for a genuine reconciliation."
He said he did not believe Belfast was the race hate capital of Europe as it has been dubbed by some.
Despite a number of high profile attacks on the Chinese, Indian, and Eastern European communities in Belfast, he disputed claims that it was any more racist than other European cities.
"I have heard stories but I would be very loath to call anywhere a race hate capital," he said. "This is an unfortunate characteristic of a large number of societies that everybody is grappling with.
"Certainly it is a standard experience that when the ethnic composition of communities change and particularly change rapidly you do get inter-ethnic tensions. You do get expressions of racism.
"There is no point in denying or refusing to use the word racism because that is precisely what it is. "I would be surprised if Belfast was the racist capital of Europe. I think there are places in Europe where there are far more nasty and far more prolific expressions of racism than what we find here.
"But there are people here who have told me they have found experiences of racism. As understandable as that may be, it is totally unacceptable.
The forum was set up last December - eight years after a commitment in the Belfast Agreement to produce legislation defining the rights of people in the North.
It has been given until the end of next March to come up with recommendations to the government and it first met last December.