Ireland, 1992

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.