This year Ireland marks the centenary of its independence. The Irish Free State was established on 6 December 1922, when we began our journey as an independent sovereign nation. From the start of that journey, we were a nation that looked outwards. One of our first acts was to apply to join the League of Nations. The following year, in his first address to the Assembly of the League of Nations, the then President of the Irish Government’s Executive Council, W. T. Cosgrave, spoke of Ireland’s desire to “avert the ancient evils of warfare and oppression; to encourage wholesome, and to discourage unwholesome relations between nation and nation; to enable even the weakest of nations to live their own lives and make their own proper contribution to the good of all, free even from the shadow and the fear of external violence, vicious penetration or injurious pressure of any kind”.
Those are the ideals that guide Ireland’s foreign policy. Those same principles, articulated 100 years ago by the League’s newest member, continue to inform our actions today — the belief that all countries have an equal right to live in peace; that all countries, no matter how small, have a contribution to make to international peace and security and to economic and social development; and that all people have the right to live in dignity and to have their human rights and fundamental freedoms respected.
One hundred years later, we as a global community are very far from living up to those principles. We are convening here at a time of crisis, when we are yet again facing the threat of widespread global hunger and food insecurity; when we see daily the devastating impacts of climate change, with those who bear no responsibility for its causes being most affected; when we have witnessed the most blatant disregard for international law and for the Charter of the United Nations on my own home continent of Europe; and when much of the progress that we were making towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals has stalled or gone into reverse as we grapple with the continuing effects of the coronavirus disease pandemic.
It does not have to be this way. We have the tools and the systems to address those issues. In the General Assembly and the other organs, institutions and agencies that make up the United Nations, we have the spaces to discuss, negotiate, share experiences and craft solutions. We have an interlocking web of charters, treaties, norms, resolutions, international jurisprudence, political declarations and agreed conclusions. Our global structures are not perfect. We know that. No structures ever are. There is much that needs reform. But it is not our systems or our structures, our treaties or charters, that are fundamentally failing us. It is the lack of political will to implement and uphold them.
I began my statement by quoting a former Irish Leader speaking to the League of Nations Assembly, almost 100 years ago. Let me quote another Irish leader and former President of Ireland, Eamon de Valera, also speaking to the League of Nations, exactly 90 years ago today. De Valera believed in the League’s potential to protect small nations through collective security. But he recognized that in order to be effective, the League’s Covenant had to be enforced and Member States had to fulfil their obligations. In his speech in September 1932, he warned that world opinion was losing faith in the League’s capacity to protect peace and stability. He said,
“People are complaining that the League is devoting its activity to matters of secondary or very minor importance, while the vital international problems of the day ... are being shelved or postponed or ignored”.
Ninety years on, we cannot continue to shelve, postpone or ignore our existential global challenges.
As an elected member of the Security Council, Ireland has seen first-hand that political will and a commitment to the principles of the Charter can deliver results. On Syria, Ireland has worked in partnership with Norway, and with all Council members, to ensure that humanitarian aid can continue to reach the millions who need it. During our 18 months on the Council, we have twice renewed the United Nations cross-border operations, which provide crucial aid to 4 million people in the north-west of the country. Ireland will continue to work to keep that critical lifeline open. We urge other members of the Council to support their further renewal. To do otherwise would have devastating consequences for the people of Syria.
We have worked with our partners on the Council to extend and renew the mandates of the 14 United Nations peacekeeping operations and the many United Nations special political missions that require the Council’s approval. Day after day, across the globe, the military and civilian personnel in those missions protect civilians, monitor ceasefires, support peacebuilding, facilitate negotiations and verify the implementation of peace agreements. Among them are hundreds of Irish men and women, who carry on our proud tradition of peacekeeping and crisis management. We are deeply proud of their service. In an echo of that tradition last year, Ireland led work on Security Council resolution 2594 (2021), the Council’s first-ever resolution on peacekeeping transitions. Adopted with the support of all Council members, it will help to ensure that the hard- won gains of peace are maintained when a peacekeeping mission ends. It puts the protection of civilians at the centre of United Nations planning for transitioning from military peacekeeping operations into civilian-led political missions in countries emerging from conflict.
We have also seen progress on the women and peace and security agenda. As co-Chair, together with Mexico, of the Informal Expert Group on Women and Peace and Security, Ireland has ensured that the role of women as peacebuilders and agents of change is at the heart of United Nations peacekeeping and political missions across the globe. We have brought the voices of grass-roots women peacebuilders to the Council table, with a record 16 women civil-society briefers during our presidency of the Council in September. Our commitment to the protection of civilians has also informed our work in leading negotiations earlier this year to agree on a political declaration on the use of explosive weapons in populated areas. The declaration is a significant milestone that recognizes the humanitarian consequences of the use of explosive weapons in populated areas and includes a number of ambitious actions to address them. I look forward to its formal adoption at a high-level international conference in Dublin on 18 November.
We have been encouraged by those successes, incremental though some of them are. But at times we have also been deeply frustrated by the Security Council’s failure to act. A year ago I stood before the Assembly (see A/76/PV.13) and spoke of our ambition for the Council to adopt a resolution on climate and security. Together with the Niger, we worked tirelessly to craft a draft resolution in the Council that reflected the reality that climate change is increasingly driving insecurity and acting as a threat multiplier. We challenged the Council to take on its responsibility to address the impact of climate change on international peace and security, and 113 countries — 113 members of the Assembly — supported us in our efforts. One country — Russia — vetoed those efforts.
It frankly beggars belief that in 2022, the United Nations organ charged with the maintenance of peace and security has still not accepted its responsibilities in this area. It is a singular failure of political will and political responsibility. A year ago, I also spoke to the Assembly about Ireland’s deep concern about the situation in Tigray, in northern Ethiopia, the looming humanitarian catastrophe there and the violations of human rights and international humanitarian law. I spoke of the vital need for a negotiated ceasefire, unfettered humanitarian access, the restoration of basic services and a political solution to the crisis. Yet a year later, we continue to raise the alarm. We continue to urge the Council to act decisively. We continue with our determination to support a political solution and seek accountability for gross human rights abuses.
Every month, the Security Council meets to discuss the situation in Palestine. Every month, Ireland, together with many of our fellow members of the Council, has reiterated its firm commitment to a two-State solution, with a viable Palestinian State based on the 1967 borders, living in peace and security alongside the State of Israel, with Jerusalem as the capital of both States. But we are no nearer today to that aim than we were when we joined the Council 18 months ago — and, truth be told, long before that. Israel’s settlement building continues — knowingly and deliberately, it would seem — to undermine the viability and territorial contiguity of a future Palestinian State and to jeopardize the possibility of a two-State solution. Settlements are a clear violation of international law and today stand in the way of a just, lasting and comprehensive peace. We should be clear that the situation in the occupied Palestinian territory is untenable. We cannot and must not become inured to it. We cannot tolerate a situation where young Palestinian people have no confidence in political progress and no hope for the future. The very real risk is that the space for the political middle ground is being squeezed out, further lessening the prospects of a just and lasting solution. The international community must renew its efforts. Progress will not be possible without addressing the root causes of the conflict. The Security Council must fulfil its responsibilities. Crucially, it must work for compliance with its own resolutions.
With regard to Afghanistan, since the Taliban takeover of Kabul Ireland has resolutely defended the human rights of the Afghan people, particularly women and girls, and we have increased our humanitarian aid. We helped to ensure that the mandate for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, adopted in March through Security Council resolution 2626 (2022), was directly informed by the courageous activism of Afghan women. And we have pushed for accountability for the Taliban’s actions. But we continue to witness the ongoing erosion of the rights of Afghan citizens, particularly women and girls, as well as those of ethnic and religious minorities and the LGBTQI+ community. September is a month when many students around the world return to school. For girls in Afghanistan, there is no return. They have now been out of school for more than a year. That is a clear violation of their fundamental rights and freedoms. Their potential
will not be fulfilled and that of Afghanistan will be weakened if the situation continues to prevail.
At this time of heightened nuclear threat, it is deeply regrettable that one country alone—Russia—prevented an agreement from being reached at the tenth Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons last month. The heightened nuclear risks arising from Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and the threats to nuclear safety and security resulting from military activity in and near civilian nuclear facilities in Ukraine are unprecedented. The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons must remain an essential element of international peace and security. The urgency of its full implementation cannot be overstated.
In the past few days, many of my colleagues in this Hall have spoken of Russia’s illegal and immoral invasion of Ukraine. For European Member States in particular it carries dark echoes of our continent’s past. We face an expansionist Power brutally invading and occupying a peaceful neighbour. While we in Europe faced that many times in the twentieth century, we did not think we would face it again in the twenty-first. But this is not just a European issue or a concern for the West. All States, and particularly small countries such as my own, should fear a world where might equals right, where the strong can bully the weak, where sovereignty and territorial integrity can be blatantly violated and where the Charter that all of us in the Assembly have faithfully put our trust in can be flouted with impunity.
In Ukraine in July, I heard first-hand accounts from civilians of the brutality and violence visited on men, women and children by the occupying Russian forces. Where Russia’s forces have been pushed back, we have seen the wanton destruction and the uncovering of mass civilian graves such as in Bucha and, more recently, Izyum. We have seen the targeting of nuclear facilities and of civilian infrastructure. And now we see President Putin’s planned sham referendums in eastern Ukraine, aimed at forcibly changing its borders, in clear violation of the Charter. We have to name what we are seeing. Those actions, taken collectively, show Russia behaving like a rogue State.
We are also seeing how the impact of Russia’s aggression reaches far beyond Ukrainian or European shores and borders. From the Horn of Africa to the Sahel and beyond, food insecurity has reached a critical tipping point. Some of the countries that have been the worst affected by the current food-insecurity crisis are those most reliant on imports of wheat from Russia and Ukraine. Combined with the impact of climate change, conflict, severe drought and other extreme weather events, we are facing a crisis that requires urgent action. Like many others represented in this Hall, Ireland has responded by increasing its humanitarian aid. That has included direct humanitarian support of €78 million for the Horn of Africa and sustained and early funding to other severely affected countries and regions, including Yemen, Afghanistan and the Sahel.
Yesterday, together with the United States, UNICEF and others, Ireland led a pledging event at which we committed an additional €50 million over three years specifically to tackle acute child malnutrition. We have also increased our core funding to the Central Emergency Response Fund in recognition of the critical importance of enabling United Nations agencies to respond rapidly as crises unfold. We have prioritized gender responsiveness in our humanitarian work, addressing the particular vulnerabilities faced by women, girls and boys in emergency settings. And we have adapted our funding and our programming so that we respond to humanitarian emergencies in a way that underpins our climate, development and peacebuilding interventions and builds the resilience of individuals, families and communities.
The link between conflict and food insecurity is irrefutable. That is why we focused on hunger and conflict as a priority for our term on the Security Council. Conflict is now the main driver of hunger, reversing some of the gains made during recent decades. We are failing in the challenge to reach zero hunger. Ireland’s long-standing commitment to food security will guide our international cooperation for many years to come. Ending world hunger and ensuring the right to food must be placed firmly at the top of the political agenda. At major summits over the past 12 months on food systems and nutrition for growth and at the European Union-African Union Summit, Ireland has committed to helping partner countries on their journey towards sustainable, resilient and nutritious food systems. That transformation is more urgent now than ever.
At the twenty-seventh Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change later this year, we will be at the forefront of efforts to combat the existential threat of climate change. Adaptation to climate change and its effects will remain a key focus of our international engagement and support. We must make progress on averting,
minimizing and addressing losses and damages that are a direct result of our changing climate.
On global health, Ireland has strongly supported the work of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria since its inception 20 years ago. This week we announced a significant new contribution of €65 million over three years — a 30 per cent increase over our previous such contribution — to support their important work against those diseases, as well as the related strengthening of health systems.
The United Nations and the rules-based international order are central to who we are as a nation. But multilateralism can succeed only if it is effective, and it can be effective only if we, the Member States, allow it to be so. That takes courage, political will and commitment to collective solutions to global challenges. It takes a readiness to compromise, and it takes a genuine belief in the principles of the Charter. When, in 100 years’ time, a future Irish leader marks the bicentenary of Ireland’s independence and returns to this Hall, I hope that he or she will be making a very different speech — one that celebrates substantive, sustained progress in ending conflict and tackling global inequality, poverty and hunger; one that will not cite frustrations over the use of the veto in the Security Council to thwart the will of a majority of Member States, because the veto will be an anachronism that has long ceased to exist; one that refers to a strengthened and reformed United Nations system, structured and equipped to tackle the challenges of its day; one that remarks on the common will to uphold the principles of the Charter of the United Nations and that looks back with relief at the collective action that brought this planet back from the brink of catastrophic collapse.