First of all, Mr. President,
may I congratulate you on your election and wish you
well in the months ahead.
Upon its formation earlier this year, the Irish
Government set itself the goal of becoming a model
Member State of the this great Organization. We have
set out an ambitious programme to be a world leader in
development assistance, rapid response to humanitarian
disasters and conflict resolution.
This is because our own history shows that there
is a path from famine to plenty and from conflict to
peace. And from that history has grown a
determination, in ordinary Irish men and women, to
stand in the vanguard of the fight against conflict,
hunger and the denial of human rights, a fight best
fought by a strong and equally determined United
Nations a fight we cannot afford to lose.
It is also because after six decades, the core goal
of the United Nations universal peace and
security unfortunately still eludes us. Today, in spite
of all our efforts, violent conflict remains all too
common.
The causes of conflict are many. But very often, it
is in the persistence of poverty and in the denial of
human rights that we find the causes of conflict, the
enduring results of conflict and the seeds of future
conflict. In making peace, we must be as creative and
as determined as those waging war.
The range of instruments now available
strengthens our collective capacity to resolve conflict.
We must use that full array with determination now.
We must ensure that the United Nations Peacebuilding
Commission and Peacebuilding Fund are organized and
resourced to fulfil their important mandate. We must
maintain our support for United Nations-mandated
peacekeeping operations, which today are at an all-time
high in terms of their size, scope and complexity. We
must also support strengthened United Nations efforts
in the fields of conflict prevention and resolution. We
in Ireland will play our part.
My Government has decided to significantly
increase its commitment to conflict resolution,
including through the establishment of a designated
unit in the Foreign Ministry, the creation of an
academic Centre for Conflict Resolution, a system of
roving ambassadors to affected regions and an annual
fund of €25 million to assist conflict resolution in the
developing world.
In the years ahead, we will also work to
strengthen the capacity of the African Union and
subregional organizations to make and build peace for
themselves. We will focus our efforts on peacemaking
during conflict and peacebuilding after conflict. We
will also work on identifying, distilling and sharing the
lessons of conflict resolution. We will be particularly
active in Africa, including through working with our
partner Governments under our Irish Aid programme.
We will explore the links between climate change and
conflict, because climate change directly threatens not
only the most vulnerable but all of our shared goals of
progress, peace and development.
The focus of our foreign policy on rights,
development and now conflict resolution underlines
once again Ireland’s commitment to the global agenda
of the United Nations. But this convergence is also
underscored by our own national experience of
peacemaking. Speaking here in New York in April
1969, before the appalling escalation of violence in
Northern Ireland, one of my distinguished
predecessors, Frank Aiken, said “I think there is
sufficient wisdom if it can only be energized in our
section of the world, in these islands off the North
West of Europe, to settle the problem.” For far too long
that sufficient wisdom eluded us.
For almost 40 years it has been my duty and that
of my predecessors as Minister for Foreign Affairs to
brief this Assembly on the search for peace on the
island of Ireland. I am particularly delighted to report
that perhaps, save for general updates on progress, this
will no longer be necessary.
The conflict in Northern Ireland lasted for more
than three decades and was made apparently insoluble
by issues of national, cultural and religious identity,
contested historical narratives and claims of
sovereignty, all hardened by the direct experiences of
division, inequality and violence.
Since the ceasefires of the mid-1990s and the
negotiation of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998,
there has been much better news to report. But the final
steps to the full implementation of that Agreement
were not completed until earlier this year. With the
formation of the power-sharing Northern Ireland
Executive, bringing together historic opponents from
across the political divide, we have opened an
extraordinary new chapter in the history of the island
of Ireland.
Legacies of separation and distrust remain, and
the inevitable challenges and difficulties of normal
politics will need wise and sensitive management. But
there is an overwhelming consensus that this new
beginning can be nurtured and sustained.
The task is no longer to find peace, but to
maintain and build on the peace we have found. I do
not believe our success offers a universal, transferable
formula, but I do believe that our experience of failure
and then success over 40 years provides insights and
lessons worth sharing. One of the specific tasks of our
conflict resolution initiative is to codify those insights
and lessons. But today I will offer just a few.
First, in the end, those who are part of the
problem must be part of the solution not because we
approve of their actions or beliefs, but because without
them it is all too easy for an agreement among others to
be destroyed.
Secondly, inclusive dialogue must, however, take
place on the basis of clear and guaranteed principles. In
Ireland, these were consent, non-violence and parity of
esteem.
Thirdly, partnerships between Governments and
involving sympathetic third parties in our case the
United States and the European Union can develop
comprehensive frameworks within which enduring
settlements can be reached.
Fourthly, it is often necessary to take risks for
peace but those risks must be carefully calibrated.
Timing is of the essence and so is patience, and there
are times when contacts must be private and at arm’s
length.
Fifthly, our experience demonstrates the need to
address all issues, all of the causes of conflict,
comprehensively, no matter how difficult and
intractable they may be, and even if they have to be
resolved in different time frames.
Sixth, popular endorsement of an agreement
through the ballot box makes it immensely more
legitimate and durable.
Finally, without effective and faithful
implementation, again often with external assistance,
an agreement’s viability and credibility can quickly ebb
away.
On a more practical and operational level, we
have devised and implemented innovative
arrangements for dealing with many of the issues that
dominate peacemaking and peacebuilding in our case:
constitutional change, power sharing, cross-border
cooperation, transitional justice, policing and security
reform, equality and human rights, conflict over
symbols, arms decommissioning and prisoner release.
In our own process, we have learned much from
others, particularly from the instance of South Africa.
Together, I hope we can, in Frank Aiken’s term,
develop both sufficient wisdom and sufficient will to
resolve enduring and complex conflicts.
Working with a strengthened United Nations and
sharing lessons with one another, I passionately hope
we can advance the day when political leaders from
other regions of the world blighted by conflict can
announce in this forum that peace has come to them
too.
Northern Ireland has been added to the list of
conflicts resolved. But the road to universal peace is
still blocked by conflicts old, new and threatened.
Today, across the world we stand with the people
of Burma. The courage of the Buddhist monks and
nuns and their supporters has won universal
admiration. The efforts of its regime to conceal its
brutality behind a wall of silence have failed. It has
been rightly condemned for its violent response. I call
on its leaders at long last to respond constructively to
the wishes of the people, to stop their violence and to
release Aung San Suu Kyi and all other political
prisoners. The process of national reconciliation and
democratization must begin in earnest, and we hope
that the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy will be able
to report progress on his return here in a few days.
We look to the Security Council to respond
effectively to the compelling calls of the international
community. It is neither acceptable nor true to argue, as
some of its members have, that the situation in Burma
is not a question of international peace and security.
The potential regional consequences of the crisis are
evident to all. This places a particular onus on the
Governments of China, India and of the countries of
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). I
welcome the encouraging recent signs of positive and
concerned engagement and urge them to redouble their
efforts.
Within the European Union, Ireland has long
taken a strong and principled position on Burma. We
are looking urgently at how to increase the pressure on
the regime, including through further European Union
restrictive measures, without harming the ordinary
people, whose suffering is already so great.
As it is for people across the world, Darfur is a
matter of grave concern in Ireland. We have made it a
priority for our diplomacy and our Irish Aid
programme. We must solve the humanitarian and
security crisis while simultaneously establishing the
foundations for longer-term peace and development.
We urge the full, effective and speedy deployment of
the African Union-United Nations Hybrid Operation in
Darfur. Khartoum must actively cooperate and at last
desist from all obstruction. Rebel groups must also
play their part. The recent attack on peacekeepers in
Darfur was an outrage and was rightly condemned
here. I would like to express my sympathies and those
of the Irish Government to the families of those killed.
In keeping with our proud tradition of
peacekeeping, Ireland expects to make a substantial
contribution to the United Nations-mandated mission
to Chad and the Central African Republic to help aid
refugees and address the regional dimension of the
Darfur crisis.
All those who are party to the conflict must
commit to the political talks in Libya next month. I
welcome the Secretary-General’s establishment of a
trust fund to support these talks, and I pledge Ireland’s
support in that respect. If commitments are not fulfilled
and progress does not materialize, Ireland will support
further sanctions against non-cooperating parties.
I am particularly and gravely concerned at the
increasingly serious humanitarian situation in
Zimbabwe. The current Southern African Development
Community initiative, led by President Mbeki, offers
the best hope for progress and I would encourage all
those involved to redouble their efforts to agree on a
new political dispensation offering real political reform
and economic recovery for all Zimbabweans.
The situation in the Middle East is always high
on our agenda. There has been a collective
international failure to establish a credible political
process leading to a two-State solution. But today there
are possibilities for change. The outlines of a viable
settlement are clear to everyone, even if it will require
difficult and painful compromises. Ireland strongly
supports the dialogue between Prime Minister Olmert
and President Abbas. We are also encouraged by the
determination of the Arab States to pursue the historic
Arab Peace Initiative. We share the hope that the
international meeting now in preparation under
Secretary Rice’s leadership will indeed be serious and
substantive and set in train a transformation of the
political landscape and the lives of its people.
Ireland’s historic commitment to nuclear
disarmament and non-proliferation continues. We are
also active in seeking a comprehensive response to the
curse of cluster munitions, the appalling effects of
which are all too evident in Lebanon and elsewhere. As
a contribution to the collaborative effort launched in
Oslo last February, Ireland will host a diplomatic
conference in May 2008, which we hope will finalize
the first-ever international agreement on cluster
munitions.
The establishment of the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs) spurred our efforts to
tackle poverty and its consequences. I greatly welcome
the Secretary-General’s establishment of the MDG
Africa Steering Group to lead a determined push to
achieve our targets for 2015.
Ireland is doing its part. We are currently
spending more than 0.5 per cent of our gross national
product on overseas development aid and will reach
0.7 per cent by 2012. We have substantially increased
our support to humanitarian relief operations and to
tackling HIV/AIDS.
But we know that more needs to be done. The
donor community is failing the test set by the MDGs.
Overseas aid has fallen by 5 per cent in real terms. It is
not acceptable in today’s world that there are still 980
million people living in abject poverty, that half of the
developing world has no access to basic sanitation or
that half a million women will die in pregnancy or
childbirth each year. Perhaps the most damning fact is
that one in seven people on this Earth today do not get
enough food to eat to have a healthy and productive
life. That figure jumps to one in four in sub-Saharan
Africa.
To help meet that most basic of challenges,
Ireland has established a Hunger Task Force to
examine the root causes of that enduring source of
misery, disease and death. It will help us contribute to
the MDG goal of halving hunger and poverty. I am
delighted that the experts on the Hunger Task Force
include Jeffrey Sachs, the Special Adviser to the
Secretary-General on the MDGs.
Ireland will maintain and increase its
commitment to the work of the United Nations in the
fields of peace and security, development and human
rights. There is no mystery to the challenges facing us,
even if they are formidable. Our generation is uniquely
equipped to know what it will take to deal with them.
We have the scientific knowledge, the experience, the
resources and, through this Organization, the
mechanism for cooperation to rise to these challenges.
We must summon sufficient wisdom and will to do so.