Ireland

I extend my warm congratulations to you, Sir, and to Bulgaria on your election to the office of President of the General Assembly. Ireland, as one of the Vice-Presidents of the Assembly, looks forward to cooperating closely with you as you guide our work at this session of the Assembly. In the weeks ahead the Assembly will examine many aspects of current international life. But today I want to focus on two issues that I believe, my country believes, my Government believes, require our urgent attention. First, we must act now to save the millions starving in Somalia; and secondly, the United Nations must move the questions of justice and development to the top of its agenda. We have had too many Somalias. Our Secretary-General, Mr. Boutros-Ghali, is the first African to lead the Organization, and I wish to begin my short address with that particular continent. Last month I spent three or four days in Somalia, and I will shortly return there with the President of Ireland, Mary Robinson. She has decided to visit Somalia to show solidarity with the people of that starving land, and to underline the compelling need for more effective international action. My visit was a profoundly disturbing experience. Words fail before the scale of the catastrophe and the depth of the suffering. Yesterday at one feeding station alone in Baidoa, which I visited during my visit, 532 people died in one day. Today, many more will die. And tomorrow. Until we act. It is a scandal. It is a scandal for Somalia's leaders who continue to squabble and fight while their people continue to starve and die. It is a scandal for outsiders, for the developed world, for the membership of the United Nations, who have failed to respond swiftly and effectively.* Throughout, international non-governmental organizations and organizations from my own country have taken the lead, and I believe it is now time for Governments and the international community to follow. I pay a tribute to their humanitarian work and their determined efforts to confront us with this appalling crisis. Their generosity and courage should inspire a more comprehensive and committed response from the international community. What must be done? First, we must increase the volume of food and relief supplies reaching Somalia. Unless 60,000 tons of food can be distributed each month, children, women and old people will continue to die. There will be more Baidoas. Secondly, food and medicine must be distributed in conditions of civil order. Ambassador Sahnoun, the exceptional and very worthy Special Representative of the Secretary-General, Mr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, is vigorously promoting improved security. He deserves our full support. The deployment of United Nations troops will provide an essential measure of protection for food distribution. We must all, particularly the regional organizations and Somalia's neighbours, impress on clan and faction leaders the need to cooperate fully with the aid effort. Thirdly, we must work for a process of national reconciliation and for the formation of a Government with national authority. A political solution is essential for long-term recovery and to prevent a relapse into the horror that we now witness daily. The international community has the resources and the skills to save Somalia. What is needed is the political will and the organizational drive to harness those resources and deploy those skills. We have no more urgent task. For all our honest endeavours, we live in a world beset by inequality, by gross disparities and imbalances of wealth and resources. So often do nature and society combine to perpetuate injustice that the sceptic might conclude that humanity's best efforts are more often than not unequal to the challenge. Our "Agenda for Peace" must embrace also an agenda for justice and compassion. This imperative was obscured by the cold war. It is perhaps understandable that throughout those dangerous years international attention and political energies were absorbed by questions of security. But the era of ideological confrontation is, happily, over and at an end. We must grasp this opportunity to build a more humane and just international system, a system that will focus on the welfare of the individual the need for food and shelter, for human rights, for political freedom and for equality. We cannot forget that the same Charter that assigns to the United Nations responsibility for preserving international peace and security also gives the United Nations major responsibilities for promoting social and economic development. The moral responsibility of the international donor community is clear. None of us finds it easy to allocate extra resources for aid in the current difficult economic climate, but we have an obligation to provide adequate humanitarian relief for immediate crises, as well as financial and technical assistance for longer-term development. For reasons of size and economic circumstances, the scope for Ireland to donate significant amounts of aid remains limited. However, I can say that private support in Ireland for non-governmental organizations involved in development has grown steadily. Today Ireland has the highest rate of private development assistance, as a proportion of gross national product, of all countries in the world. The Irish people have themselves shown their generosity, and the Irish Government aims to respond by increasing our official development assistance. But the effort called for is wider than development assistance. Notwithstanding the end of the cold war and the disappearance of East-West confrontation, the opportunities for international cooperation are not being grasped. It is simply unacceptable that most Africans are poorer today than they were 30 years ago, that in a world that spends a trillion dollars every year on weapons of the most sophisticated kind we cannot find the resources to provide bread and clean water for millions of our fellow citizens. What is missing is a clear political focus and, by definition, a clear, directed political will. Already the international community has made a connection between the environment and development. But there are other areas in which we must look for new and broader approaches: in the international financial and economic system; in spending on armaments; and in the way in which our international organizations work. Economic activity cannot be divorced from political responsibility. How welcome it would be if the quality of analysis and the clarity of direction contained in the Secretary-General's "Agenda for Peace" could be brought to bear on a new agenda an agenda for justice and development if, when we meet here again a year from now, we were to have a thorough report, bearing the authority of the Secretary-General, which would point the way forward on aid, trade, finance, commodities and debt, a report that would develop concrete proposals to remedy the organizational deficiencies that so often thwart our best intentions. I believe that in the years ahead the success of our Organization will be measured not only by its response to individual situations of conflict but also by the way in which it deals with these urgent questions of development. The end of East-West rivalry has not brought an end to conflict or threats to peace. On the contrary, many disputes frozen by the cold war have re-emerged with vicious and deadly impact. We must intensify our cooperation on international peace and security. The January summit of the Security Council was a timely initiative, which has led directly to the Secretary-General's ambitious and thought-provoking document "An Agenda for Peace". That document assembles a range of important ideas for consolidation of the peace-keeping activities of the United Nations, as well as for extension of the role of the United Nations into the new areas of preventive diplomacy, peacemaking and peace-building. Ireland has long supported the peace-keeping activities of the United Nations. Today my country, small though it may be in population and in resources, participates in 10 of the 12 peace-keeping missions currently in the field. But, like the Secretary-General, we have felt the need to develop further the capacity of the United Nations to make and keep the peace. We therefore endorse the direction of the Secretary-General's thinking. I welcome in particular the attention given to preventive action. The earlier the United Nations can identify and act on a threat to the peace, the better are the chances of averting the outbreak or prospective outbreak of hostilities. The proposals for fact-finding missions, for improved early warning and for the preventive deployment of United Nations forces can and should be implemented now. We also support the Secretary-General's proposals for the strengthening of peace-keeping. The activities of the United Nations in this area are amongst the most innovative achievements of our age. We are prepared to work actively with the Secretariat and with other member States in coping with the new demands and problems that have emerged in relation to logistics, equipment, personnel and finance. I want to say a brief word about the financing of the United Nations. Here, I am struck by the Secretary-General's clear and urgent warning about the poor financial health of the Organization. At the very moment when the United Nations has begun to assume a more effective role in the interests of peace, when it is looked to by suffering people everywhere to provide protection and aid, its work is hampered by financial uncertainty. Let me put it simply: the Organization cannot function effectively, cannot meet the demands that we the members make upon it, unless all Member States pay their assessed contributions in full and on time. We call on all members to fulfil their financial obligations under the Charter, and we look to the General Assembly, at its current session, to adopt measures to put the Organization on a secure financial footing. I know that reform of the United Nations - and, in particular, of the Security Council is a sensitive issue that touches the very essence of post-war international cooperation. But, after almost 50 years it is reasonable to ask if the structures and methods of work agreed upon then correspond fully with contemporary realities with the growing, and now almost universal, membership of the United Nations; with the Organization's new tasks; and with the great changes that have taken place in economic and political relations. The time has come to take up these issues frankly here within the United Nations itself. We can only profit from such a discussion. Our aim should be to ensure that the decisions of the Organization are truly authoritative and representative of the will of the entire international community. One of the most significant achievements of this century has been the development of an ethic, a morality, of human rights. We have set our face uncompromisingly against violations of human rights - against torture, slavery, apartheid. It is simply not acceptable that an individual can be sacrificed to the interests of a State system rendered nameless, an afterthought as history marches on. Our modern ethic extends to the realization that human rights are essential in relations between States as well as in our national political systems. None of us can turn our backs on systematic violations of human rights or retain full trust and confidence in those responsible for such violations. To respect human rights is to respect conscience itself, whose power for good has been illustrated many times in the course of this century by a Mahatma Gandhi, by a Martin Luther King, or, in the past few years, by a Vaclav Havel or a Nelson Mandela, who, from a prison cell - "enduring the most" changed his country's history. By upholding the rights of the individual we bring the welfare and dignity of men and women to the centre of our political preoccupations. This must be the central message for next year's world conference on human rights, but I am deeply concerned that it is in danger of being lost sight of in the preparatory work. In this of all fields, we must escape from an adversarial approach and hold firmly in view the meaning of our work for the suffering of the many. I should like to make a few remarks in connection with disarmament. We cannot slacken in our determination to make progress on disarmament and arms control. The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the development of new and sophisticated conventional weapons pose a major threat to international peace and security and to regional stability. I welcome the recent agreement in the Conference on Disarmament on the chemical-weapons Convention. I welcome too the accession of France and China to the nuclear-non-proliferation Treaty. As we prepare for the 1995 Review Conference, we appeal to those countries that remain outside the Treaty to join us in making the non-proliferation regime truly universal. This is a goal for which Ireland has long striven. The effort to reduce and eliminate nuclear weapons and to end nuclear testing once and for all must be redoubled. Nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction can have no place in our future security relations. The British Foreign Secretary has already spoken in the name of the twelve member States of the European Community about the major regional challenges confronting our world the Middle East, Cambodia, South Africa, Yugoslavia and other conflicts and I fully endorse his statements in that regard. Over the past year, the Irish Government has worked tirelessly for the resumption of political dialogue which might lead to a lasting and comprehensive settlement of the problem of Northern Ireland. I am happy to report that our efforts bore fruit with the recommencement some months ago of a process of dialogue and negotiation involving the Irish and the British Governments and the constitutional political parties in Northern Ireland. The shared objective of this process is "to achieve a new beginning for relationships within Northern Ireland, within the island of Ireland and between the peoples of these islands". The Irish Government will do everything in its power to reach a settlement which will overcome present divisions and lay the foundations for lasting peace, stability and reconciliation among the Irish people. We believe such a settlement can be achieved only on the basis of the equal legitimacy of the two traditions which exist on our island. The nationalist and unionist traditions are equally valid. Each must be accorded equal respect and given meaningful political expression in new political arrangements. A valuable acknowledgement of the rights of the two traditions exists already in the Anglo-Irish Agreement. Over the past seven years, the Agreement has performed an extremely valuable role as an instrument of cooperation between the Irish and British Governments on a wide range of matters relating to Northern Ireland. Issues which have received particular attention include relations between the security forces and the community in Northern Ireland; public confidence in the administration of justice; respect for human rights and the law; the prevention of discrimination wherever it exists and the development of greater North/South economic cooperation. The Irish Government has made it clear that we would be prepared to consider a new and more broadly based agreement or structure if such an arrangement can be arrived at through direct discussion and negotiation between all of the parties concerned. The present talks are exploring that possibility. In our view, arrangements must build upon, rather than detract from, the crucial contribution made by the Anglo-Irish Agreement to political progress. It is our earnest hope that the process of dialogue which is under way at present, and in which I am personally participating, will lead to agreed arrangements which represent a fair and honourable accommodation between the two traditions on the island of Ireland. Nationalists and unionists must both feel that their political, civil, economic and social rights are fully protected and that structures are in place which respect and accommodate their respective aspirations. All of the participants in the present talks are committed to a forward-looking and constructive approach. For our part, we in the Irish Government are prepared to bring all the necessary reserves of good will and patience to bear in the search for an agreed outcome. The best hope of ultimate success lies in the insistent desire for peace on the part of the vast majority of Irish people, in both North and South, and our determination that the violence and turmoil which has been suffered over the past 23 years in Northern Ireland and on the island of Ireland shall not be visited upon future generations. Those who resort to violence in the pursuit of political aims are the enemies of the Irish people. They seek an Ireland built not on respect for the aspirations of each tradition but on bloodshed, hatred and despair. All the efforts of the Irish Government are directed towards the creation of conditions which will ensure that the scourge of violence is removed for ever. The only true path to peace, justice and stability lies in the healing of wounds and in reconciliation between the two traditions on a basis of complete equality. There is much that divides the two traditions but there is even more that unites us. The common ground between North and South, I have no doubt, will be significantly expanded by our joint progress over the years ahead along the road towards European union. By building on our shared values and objectives, we will bring closer the peaceful and stable future to which we all aspire.